CHRISTIAN
STATEHOOD IN THE AGE OF REASON
From the Enlightenment to the July Revolution (1700-1830)
Vladimir Moss
CONTENTS
Foreword……………………………………………………………..3
Part
I. The Age of Reason (1700-1789)
1. The West: The Assault on Tradition…………………….5
England:
the Conservative Enlightenment – France: the Radical Enlightenment –
Enlightened Despotism – St. Theodore Sladich - Hume: the Irrationalism of
Rationalism – Hume on Politics - Kant and Schiller: The Reaffirmation of Will -
Hamann and Herder: the Denial of Universalism - Rousseau and the General Will –
Tikhomirov on the General Will - Two Concepts of Freedom – Freemasonry: (1) The
European Element – Freemasonry: (2) The Jewish Element – The American
Revolution – Calvinism and the American Revolution - Religious Tolerance and
the American Revolution – The Enlightenment Programme: a Critique
2. The East: The Petersburg
Empire……………………..89
The
Beginnings of Russian Masonry – Tsar Peter and the West – Tsar Peter’s
Leviathan – Tsar Peter and the Orthodox East – The Verdict on Peter – Anna: the
German Persecution of Orthodoxy – Elizabeth, Masonry and Frederick the Great –
Catherine the Great – Poland: Nation without a State - Masonry under Catherine
– Shcherbatov: A Critic of Petrine Despotism – Radishchev: A Critic of Orthodox
Autocracy
Part
II. The Romantic-Nationalist Age (1789-1830)
3.
The West: The Man-God Arises..…..…….……..……137
The French
Revolution: The Constitutional Monarchy – Burke versus Paine – Illuminism - The
Jacobin Terror – La Grande Nation - The Jews and the Revolution -
Napoleon Bonaparte – Napoleon and Catholicism – Napoleon and Jewry – Napoleon
and French Nationalism – Napoleon and Latin American Nationalism – Romanticism
and Nationalism - German Nationalism – The German War of Liberation - The
Congress of Vienna - The Counter-Revolution and Joseph de Maistre
4.
The East: The Man-God Defeated..……….....………216
Tsar Paul I –
The Annexation of Georgia and the Edinoverie – Russia,
the Poles and the Jews - The Golden Age of Masonry - 1812 – The Aftermath of
Victory – Archimandrite Photius (Spassky) - The Serbian Revolution – The Greek
Revolution - The Decembrist Rebellion – St. Seraphim of Sarov
FOREWORD
The
Enlightenment represents the second major turning point in the history of the
West since its falling away from the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church
in the eleventh century.
The first, the
Renaissance-Reformation, purported to free men from the fetters of medieval
scholasticism, to bring the light of reason to bear on every aspect of human
life, and even the revelations of religion, and to raise the common man to that
potential that he was capable of achieving if he were not enslaved to the
tyranny of popes and kings. It was not,
however, a revolutionary movement in the sense that it overthrew tradition in toto and in principle. On the contrary, in order to
correct what it saw as the distortions of the Middle Ages, it appealed to the
authority of the still more ancient past, the past of pagan Greece and Rome.
And as late as the English revolution in the mid-seventeenth century both sides
passionately and sincerely appealed to arguments drawn from Holy Scripture. In
other words, it was a believing age, a Christian age, even if a heretical one;
and in Muscovite Russia there still existed one of the great and
right-believing Christian kingdoms.
However, the
Enlightenment, the second major turning-point in post-Orthodox Western history,
which took place some two centuries later at the turn of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, took a dramatic, even decisive step forward (or backward,
from the Christian point of view). No Golden Age in the past was looked back
to; no authority, whether pagan, patristic, scholastic or scriptural, was held
sacred or immune from the now omnipotent ravages of unfettered reason. And this
rampant rationalism, bearing the eternal leitmotif of western civilization, liberty, as its slogan,
begat the first truly “great” revolution, the French, which for the first time,
openly and triumphantly, tried to écraser l’infâme of
Christianity and replace it with a new, revolutionary religion. Nor was Russia,
in the Petersburg phase of its history, the same undimmed light of true belief
that it had been, infected as it was in its educated classes with the same
Enlightenment miasma. And if, by the mercy of God, Russia still found the
strength to crush the man-god of French revolutionary imperialism, it was an
uneasy peace that settled on Europe in 1815, an awareness that while throne and
altar might be safe for the time being, it was only a matter of time before the
struggle with the revolution would be renewed, a struggle that would end only
with the complete destruction of one or the other antagonist…
In this book I
have adopted the same structure of alternate chapters on East and West that I
used in my previous books, The Ideal of Christian Statehood and Christian
Statehood in the Age of Protest. With the passing of time, the distinction
between the truly Christian civilization of the East and the pseudo-Christian
one of the West becomes less and less clear-cut as elements of the latter
invade and pollute the former. But the essential difference between the two
remains, and remains the main theme of my book.
January 16/29, 2003.
Veneration of the Chains of the Apostle Peter.
PART I. THE AGE OF REASON (1700-1789)
1. THE WEST: THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Beware
lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit,
According
to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world,
And
not according to Christ,…
In
Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Colossians 2.8,3.
The
good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of
nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And
the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is
to the individual..
Diderot,
Encyclopedia.
‘Tis
not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the
scratching of my finger.
David
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book II, section 3.
The early modern period (to 1700) was
distinguished by two contrary tendencies in politics and political ideas: on
the one hand, the tendency towards the absolutist state, freed now from the
shackles of ecclesiastical and feudal obligation, and on the other hand, the
rise of representative institutions and the gradual re-imposition of shackles
on the state by the will of the people – or those classes of society (usually
the aristocrats and landowners) who considered that they stood for the people.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century the first tendency had reached its
climax in the France of Louis XIV and the Russia of Peter the Great, while the
second tendency was beginning to gather strength in the most ideologically
advanced states of the day, England and Holland. The history of the eighteenth
century up to 1789 is to a large extent that of the penetration of French
absolutism by the ideas of English scientific rationalism and democratism, and
their synthesis by the French philosophes into the universalist system
of thought known as the Enlightenment.
England:
the Conservative Enlightenment
The first war of the century, that of the
Spanish succession (1701-1713), was also the last of what we might call the
wars of religion. Henceforth wars would be fought, in the West at any rate, for
the sake of territorial or commercial aggrandizement, but not for faith – if we
exclude, that is, the atheist faith of the revolution. The turning away of the
European peoples from all such wars, was the single most important cause of
that new tone of elegant scepticism and tolerance that defined the
Enlightenment more than anything else.[1]
This war was also important because it
changed the balance of power in Europe from the “old regime” states, especially
Spain, to the victors, especially Britain, which now, as Davies writes,
“emerged as the foremost maritime power, as the leading diplomatic broker, and
as the principal opponent of French supremacy.”[2]
From now on, therefore, there were three kinds of state in Western Europe:
old-style absolutism, represented by Spain, in which Church and feudalism still
exerted their old power; new-style absolutism, represented by France, in which
Church and feudalism, while still strong, were becoming increasingly subject to
the law of the king; and constitutional monarchy, as represented by Britain and
Holland, in which the king, while still strong, was increasingly subject to the
law of parliament and, behind parliament, of mammon.
The rise of mammon, in the form of laissez-faire
capitalism, was especially important. The invention of paper money (it had
previously been invented in China) and the stock market produced the first
massive financial speculations, such as the South Sea Bubble in England and the
Mississippi Company in France. The most important men now, as Jonathan Swift
noted in 1710, were “quite different from any that were ever known before the
Revolution [of 1688]; consisting of those… whose whole fortunes lie in funds
and stocks; so that power, which… used to follow land, is now gone over into
money…”[3]
Since, as the Lord said, one cannot serve
God and mammon, this trend inevitably meant that the worship of God and zeal
for the truth waned. Already in 1668 in Samuel Butler Hudibras we can
see the revulsion from the methods of the wars of religion:
The holy text of pike and gun
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery…
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
And the rise of another, no less
pernicious tendency:
What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred poundes a year.
And that which was true before
Proved false again? Two hundred more.
By the beginning of the next century, the
trend was firmly entrenched. Thus H.M.V. Temperley writes: “The earlier half of
the eighteenth century in England is an age of materialism, a period of dim
ideals, of expiring hopes… We can recognise in English institutions, in English
ideals, in the English philosophy of this age, the same practical materialism,
the same hard rationalism, the same unreasonable self-complacency. Reason
dominated alike the intellect, the will, and the passions; politics were
self-interested, poetry didactic, philosophy critical and objective… Even the
most abstract of thinkers and the most unworldly of clerics have a mundane and
secular stamp upon them.”[4]
A depressing picture; and yet it was
precisely in this dull England of the early 18th century that the
foundations of the contemporary world were laid. Moreover, the leading
intellects of the time looked on it as by no means dull. Anthony Ashley Cooper,
the 3rd Earl of Shaftesburgy, wrote to a comrade in the Netherlands:
“There is a mighty Light which spreads its self over the world especially in
those two free Nations of England and Holland; on whom the Affairs of Europe
now turn; and if Heaven sends us soon a peace suitable to the great Socrates we
have had, it is impossible but Letters and Knowledge must advance in greater
Proportion than ever… I am far from thinking that the cause of Theisme will
lost anything by fair Dispute. I can never… wish better for it when I wish the
Establishment of an intire Philosophical Liberty”.[5]
This quotation combines many of the
characteristic themes of the Enlightenment: first, the image of light itself;
then the optimism, the belief that knowledge and education will sweep all
before it; the belief in free speech, which, it was felt then, would not damage
faith; above all, the belief in liberty. And indeed, with the English
Enlightenment there came a tolerance that went far beyond the bounds of what
had been considered tolerable in the past. Thus Catholicism was still banned,
because that was considered a political threat; but the Earl of
Shaftesbury was allowed “to print his scandalous view that religion should be
optional and atheism considered a possible form of belief”...[6]
The Enlightenment world-view can be
summarised as follows: “All men are by nature equal; all have the same natural
rights to strive after happiness, to self-preservation, to the free control of
their persons and property, to resist oppression, to hold and express whatever
opinions they please. The people is sovereign; it cannot alienate its
sovereignty; and every government not established by the free consent of the
community is a usurpation. The title-deeds of man’s rights, as Sieyès
said, are not lost. They are preserved in his reason. Reason is infallible and
omnipotent. It can discover truth and compel conviction. Rightly consulted, it
will reveal to us that code of nature which should be recognised and enforced
by the civil law. No evil enactment which violates natural law is valid. Nature
meant man to be virtuous and happy. He is vicious and miserable, because he
transgresses her laws and despises her teaching.
“The essence of these doctrines is that
man should reject every institution and creed which cannot approve itself to
pure reason, the reason of the individual. It is true that if reason is to be
thus trusted it must be unclouded by prejudice and superstition. These are at
once the cause and effect of the defective and mischievous social, political
and religious institutions, which have perverted man’s nature, inflamed his
passions, and distorted his judgement. Therefore to overthrow prejudice and
superstition should be the first effort of those who would restore to man his
natural rights.”[7]
The English Enlightenment rested on the
achievements of two intellectual giants: John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton.
Newton’s work astonished the world. His Principia was the single most
important work of science before Einsteing. His Opticks, by explicating
the nature of light, provided the Enlightenment thinkers with the perfect image
of that programme of intellectual enlightenment that they were trying to carry
out. As Alexander Pope put it,
Nature, and Nature’s Laws lay Hid from
Sight;
Voltaire was
so enamoured of Newtonian principles that he called his mistress
“Venus-Newton”. Newtonian physics appeared to
promise the unlocking of all Nature’s secrets by the use of reason alone –
although it must be remembered that Newton believed in revelation as well as
reason and wrote many commentaries on the Scriptures.
Roy Porter writes: “Newton was the god who
put English science on the map, an intellectual colossus, flanked by Bacon and
Locke.
To mortals lent to trace His boundless works
From laws sublimely simple, speak thy fame
In all philosophy.
Sang James
Thomson in his ‘Ode on the Death of Sir Isaac Newton’ (1727). Wordsworth was
later more Romantic:
Newton with his prism and silent face,
… a mind for ever,
Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.
‘Newton’ the
icon proved crucial to the British Enlightenment, universally praised except by
a few obdurate outsiders, notably William Blake, who detested him and all his
works.
“What was crucial about Newton – apart from
the fact that, so far as his supporters were concerned, he was a Briton blessed
with omniscience – was that he put forward a vision of Nature which, whilst
revolutionary, reinforced latitudinarian Christianity. For all but a few
diehards, Newtonianism was an invincible weapon against atheism, upholding no
mere First Cause but an actively intervening personal Creator who continually
sustained Nature and, once in a while, applied a rectifying touch. Like Locke,
furthermore, the public Newton radiated intellectual humility. Repudiating the a
priori speculations of Descartes and later rationalists, he preferred
empiricism: he would ‘frame no hypotheses’ (hypotheses non fingo), and
neither would he pry into God’s secrets. Thus, while he had elucidated the law
of gravity, he did not pretend to divine its causes. Not least, in best
enlightened fashion, Newtonian science set plain facts above mystifying
metaphysics. In Newtonianism, British scientific culture found its enduring
rhetoric: humble, empirical, co-operative, pious, useful. ‘I don’t know what I
may seem to the world, but, as to myself,’ he recalled, in his supreme
soundbite, ‘I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before
me’….
“The affinities between the Newtonian
cosmos and the post-1688 polity were played up. In the year after the master’s
death, his disciple J.T. Desaguliers produced an explicit application of
physics to politics in The Newtonian System of the World: The Best Model of
Government, an Allegorical Poem (1728), where the British monarchy was
celebrated as the guarantor of liberty and rights: ‘attractin is now as universal
in the political, as the philosophical world’.
What made the Planets in such Order move,
He said, was Harmony and mutual Love.
God himself was commended as a kind of
constitutional monarch:
His Pow’r, coerc’ed by Laws, still leaves them free,
Directs but not Destroys their Liberty.
The Principia thus provided an
atomic exploratory model not just for Nature but for society too (freely moving
individuals governed by law)…
“This enthronement of the mechanical
philosophy, the key paradigm switch of the ‘scientific revolution’, in turn
sanctioned the new assertions of man’s rights over Nature so salient to
enlightened thought… No longer alive or occult but rather composed of largely
inert matter, Nature could be weighted, measured – and mastered. The mechanical
philosophy fostered belief that man was permitted, indeed dutybound, to apply
himself to Nature for (in Bacon’s words) the ‘glory of God and the relief of
man’s estate’. Since Nature was not, after all, sacred or ‘ensouled’, there
could be nothing impious about utilizing and dominating it. The progressiveness
of science thus became pivotal to enlightened propaganda. The was now well-lit,
as bright as light itself.”[9]
But, as we shall see in more detail later,
it was a light that cast much of reality into the shadows; for “with the
Newtonian mechanistic synthesis,” writes Philip Sherrard, “… the world-picture,
with man in it, is flattened and neutralized, stripped of all sacred or
spiritual qualities, of all hierarchical differentiation, and spread out before
the human observor like a blank chart on which nothing can be registered except
what is capable of being measured.”[10]
Locke’s philosophy also began with a tabula
rasa, the mind of man before empirical sensations have been imprinted upon
it. The development of the mind then depends on the movement and association
and ordering of sensations and the concepts that arise from them, rather like
the atoms of Newton’s universe. And the laws of physical motion and attraction
correspond to the laws of mental inference and deduction, the product of the
true deus ex machina of the Newtonian-Lockean universe – Reason.
Locke’s political and psychological
treatises promised that all the problems of human existence could be amicably
settled by reason and rather than revelation, and reasonableness rather than
passion. Traditional religion was not to be discarded, but purified of
irrational elements, placed on a firmer, that
is, more rational and reasonable foundation; for, as Benjamin Whichcote had
said, with Locke’s agreement, “there is nothing so intrinsically rational as
religion”.[11] Hence the
title of another of Locke’s works: The Reasonableness of Christianity
(1695), in which only one key dogma was proclaimed as necessary: that Jesus was
the Messiah, proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom.
Reason, for Locke, was “the candle of the
Lord”, “a natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, and Fountain
of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has
laid within the reach of their natural faculties”.[12]
Armed with reason, and even without Christ, one can know what is the just life
lived in accordance with natural law. This reason, however, was not the
deductive reason championed by the contemporary German Gottfried Leibniz. The
ideas of Leibniz, writes Sir Isaiah Berlin, “were developed by his followers
and interpreters into a coherent and dogmatic metaphysical system which, so
their popularisers claimed, was logically demonstrated by deductive steps from
simple premises, in their turn self-evident to those who could use that
infallible intellectual intuition with which all thinking beings were endowed
at birth. This rigid intellectualism was attacked in England, where no form of
pure rationalism has ever found a congenial soil, by the most influential
philosophical writers of the age, Locke, Hume, and, towards the end of the
century, Bentham and the philosophical radicals, who agreed in denying the
existence of any such faculty as an intellectual intuition into the real nature
of things. No faculty other than the familiar physical senses could provide
that initial empirical information on which all other knowledge of the world in
ultimately founded. Since all information was conveyed by the senses, reason
could not be an independent source of knowledge, and was responsible only for
arranging, classifying and fitting together such information, and drawing
deductions from it, operating on material obtained without its aid.”[13]
“Locke,” writes Roy Porter, “had no truck
with the fideist line that reason and faith were at odds; for the latter was
properly ‘nothing but a firm assent of the mind: which… cannot be accorded to
anything but upon good reason’. Gullibility was not piety. To accept a book,
for instance, as revelation without chekcing out the author was gross
superstition – how could it honour God to suppose that faith overrode reason,
for was not reason no less God-given?
“In a typically enlightened move, Locke
restricted the kinds of truths which God might reveal: revelation could not be
admitted contrary to reason, and ‘faith can never convince us of anything that
contradicts our knowledge’. Yet there remained matters on which hard facts were
unobtainable, as, for instance, Heaven or the resurrection of the dead: ‘being
beyond the discovery or reason’, such issues were ‘purely matters for faith’.
“In short, Locke raised no objections to
revealed truth as such, but whether something ‘be a divine revelation or no,
reason must judge – it was the constant court of appeal. The credo, quia
impossibile est of the early Church fathers might seem the acme of
devotion, but it ‘would prove a very ill rule for men to choose their opinions
or religion by’. Unless false prophets were strenuously avoided, the mind would
fall prey to ‘enthusiasm’, that eruption of the ‘ungrounded fancies of a man’s
own brain’. Doubtless, God might speak directly to holy men, but Locke feared
the exploitation of popular credulity, and urged extreme caution.”[14]
Lockean rationalism led to the theology of
Deism, which sought to confine God’s activity in the world to the original act
of creation. Thus the Deists’ understanding of God was closely modelled on the
English monarchy: “’God is a monarch’, opined Viscount Bolingbroke, ‘yet not an
arbitrary but a limited monarch’: His power was limited by His reason”.[15]
All history since the creation could be understood by reason alone without
recourse to Divine Revelation or Divine intervention. Thus in 1730 Matthew
Tyndal, fellow of All Souls, Oxford, published his Christianity as Old as
the Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature. In
it he declared: “If nothing but Reasoning can improve Reason, and no Book can
improve my Reason in any Point, but as it gives me convincing Proofs of its
Reasonableness; a Revelation, that will not suffer us to judge of its Dictates
by our Reason, is so far from improving Reason, that it forbids the Use of it…
Understanding… can only be improv’d by studying the Nature and Reason of
things: ‘I applied my Heart’ (says the wisest of Men) ‘to know, and to search,
and to seek out Wisdom and the Reason of Things’ (Ecclesiastes 7.25)…”[16]
Of course, the word “Reason” has a long
and honourable history in Christian theology; Christ Himself is called the
Wisdom and the Word of God, and the word “Logos” can be translated by “Reason”.
But what the Deists were proposing was no Christian use of human reason
enlightened by Divine Reason. Reason for them was something divorced from
Revelation and therefore from Christ; it was something purely ratiocinative,
rationalist; it was what we would now call ratiocination or intellection
rather than the grace-filled, revelation-oriented reason of the Christian
theologians. “Reason is for the philosopher what Grace is for the Christian”,
wrote Diderot.[17]
It followed from this Deistic concept of
God and Divine Providence that all the complicated theological speculation and
argument of earlier centuries was as superfluous as revelation itself. The calm,
lucid religion of nature practised by philosopher-scientists would replace the
arid, tortured religion of the theologians. And such a religion, as well as
being simpler, would be much more joyful that the old. No more need to worry
about sin, or the wrath of God, or hell. No more odium theologicum, just
gaudium naturale. As Porter writes, “rejecting the bogeyman of a
vengeful Jehovah blasting wicked sinners, enlightened divines instated a more
optimistic (pelagian) theology, proclaiming the benevolence of the Supreme
Being and man’s capacity to fulfil his duties through his God-given faculties,
the chief of these being reason, that candle of the Lord.”[18]
The centre of attention was no longer the
life of the age to come, but this empirical world with its delightfully
harmonious, rational laws, reflecting a wise, beneficent Creator and His happy,
reasonable creaturez.
Thus the cult of happiness was another
important aspect of the Enlightenment that began in England. Porter writes:
“The Ancients taught: ‘be virtuous’, and Christianity: ‘have faith’; but the
Moderns proclaimed: ‘be happy’. Replacing the holiness preached by the Church,
the great ideal of the modern world has been happiness, and it was the thinkers
of the 18th century who first insisted upon that value shift.
Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! Whate’er thy name…
sang poet
Alexander Pope. ‘Happiness is the only thing of real value in existence’,
proclaimed the essayist Soame Jenyns. ‘Pleasure is now the principal remaining
part of your education,’ Lord Chesterfield instructed his son.
“And if phrases like ‘pleasure-loving’
always hinted at the unacceptable face of hedonism, it would be hard to deny
that the quest for happiness – indeed the right to happiness – became a
commonplace of Enlightenment thinking, even before it was codified into Jeremy
Bentham’s utilitarian ‘greatest happiness of the greatest number’ definition.
That formula was itself a variant upon phrases earlier developed by the moral
philosopher Francis Hutcheson, and by the Unitarian polymath, Joseph Priestley,
who deemed that ‘the good and happiness of the members, that is, the majority
of the members of any state, is the great standard by which everything related
to that state must finally be determined.’
“The quest for happiness became central to
enlightened thinking throughout Europe, and it would be foolish to imply that
British thinkers had any monopoly of the idea. Nevertheless, it was a notion
which found many of its earliest champions in this country. ‘I will faithfully
pursue that happiness I propose to myself,’… had insisted at the end of the 17th
century. And English thinkers were to the fore in justifying happiness as a
goal….
“What changes of mind made hedonism
acceptable to the Enlightenment? In part, a new turn in theology itself. By
1700 rational Anglicanism was picturing God as the benign Architect of a
well-designed universe. The Earth was a law-governed habitat meant for
mankind’s use; man could garner the fruits of the soil, tame the animals and
quarry the crust. Paralleling this new Christian optimism ran lines of moral
philosophy and aesthetics espoused by the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and his
admirer, Francis Hutcheson. Scorning gravity and the grave, Shaftesbury’s
rhapsodies to the pleasures of virtue pointed the way for those who would
champion the virtues of pleasure.
“Early Enlightenment philosophers like
Locke gave ethics a new basis in psychology. It was emphasized that, contrary
to Augustinian rigour, human nature was not hopelessly depraved; rather the
passions were naturally benign – and in any case pleasure was to be derived
from ‘sympathy’ with them. Virtue was, in short, part and parcel of a true
psychology of pleasure and was its own reward. Good taste and good morals fused
in an aesthetic of virtue.
“Like Nature at large, man became viewed
as a machine made up of parts, open to scientific study through the techniques
of a ‘moral anatomy’ which would unveil psychological no less than physical
laws of motion. Building on such natural scientific postulates, thinkers
championed individualism and the right to self-improvement. It became common,
as in Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, to represent society as a
hive made up of individuals, each pulsating with needs, desires and drives
which hopefully would work for the best: private vices, public benefits. ‘The
wants of the mind are infinite,’ asserted the property developer and physician
Nicholas Barbon, expressing views which pointed towards Adam Smith’s
celebration of ‘the uniform, constant and uninterrupted effort of every man to
better his condition’. ‘Self love’, asserted Joseph Tucker, Dean of Gloucester
Cathedral, ‘is the great Mover in human Nature’.”[19]
This man-centred view of the universe was
summed up in Pope’s verse:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.[20]
“Indeed,” writes Berlin, “this task was of
crucial importance: for without it a true and clear picture of the principal
‘faculties’ and operations of the human mind, one could not be certain how much
credence to give to various types of thought or reasoning, nor how to determine
the sources and limits of human knowledge, nor the relationship between its
varieties. But unless this was known the claims of ignoramuses and charlatans
could not be properly exposed; nor the new picture of the material world
adequately related to other matters of interest to men – moral conduct,
aesthetic principles, laws of history and of social and political life, the
‘inner’ workings of the passions and the imagination, and all the other issues
of central interest to human beings. A science of nature had been created; a
science of the mind had yet to be made.”[21]
France: The Radical Enlightenment
The English Enlightenment, while
theologically and philosophically radical, was politically conservative. The
reason for this was that the English revolution had already happened, and by
1700 the essential freedoms, especially the freedom of the press, which the
Enlightenment thinkers valued, had already been won. “In these circumstances,”
writes Porter, “enlightened ideologies were to assume a unique inflection in
England: one less concerned to lambast the status quo than to vindicate
it against adversaries left and right, high and low. Poachers were turning
gamekeepers; implacable critics of princes now became something more like
apologists for them; those who had held that power corrupted now found
themselves, with the advent of political stabilisation, praising the Whig
regime as the bulwark of Protestant liberties….
“The English, in [Pocock’s] view, were
uniquely able to enjoy an enlightenment without philosophes precisely
because, at least after 1714, there was no longer any infâme to be
crushed…
“There was no further need to contemplate
regicide because Great Britain was already a mixed monarchy, with inbuilt
constitutional checks on the royal will; nor would radicals howl to string up
the nobility, since they had abandoned feudalism for finance. What Pocock
tentatively calls the ‘conservative enlightenment’ was thus a holding
operation, rationalizing the post-1688 settlement, pathologizing its enemies
and dangling seductive prospects of future security and prosperity. The Enlightenment
became established and the established became enlightened.”[22]
It was very different in France. The
French had not yet beheaded their king; their Protestants had no liberties, and
their intellectuals no freedom of the press. Therefore the ideas of the English
Enlightenment, popularised for a French audience by Voltaire in his Letters
on the English and Elements of Newton’s Physics, and by Montesquieu
in his The Spirit of the Laws, acquired an altogether sharper, more
revolutionary edge. The tolerant English empiricism became the French cult
of reason, a fiercely intolerant revolt against all revealed religion. For,
as Berlin writes, the French philosophes were perceived to be “the first
organised adversaries of dogmatism, traditionalism, religion, superstition,
ignorance, oppression.”[23]
Reason for the philosophes, as for
the English thinkers, was something down-to-earth and utilitarian – “not man’s
mind as such,” writes Cragg, “but the way in which his rational faculties could
be used to achieve certain specific ends. Descartes had relied on deduction;
Newton had used inductive analysis in penetrating to the great secret of
nature’s marvellous laws, and the spirit and method of Newtonian physics ruled
the eighteenth century. Nature was invested with unparalleled authority, and it
was assumed that natural law ruled every area into which the mind of man could
penetrate. Nature was the test of truth. Man’s ideas and his institutions were
judged by their conformity with those laws which, said Voltaire, ‘nature
reveals at all times, to all men’. The principles which Newton had found in the
physical universe could surely be applied in every field of inquiry. The age
was enchanted with the orderly and rational structure of nature; by an easy
transition that the reasonable and the natural must be synonymous. Nature was
everywhere supreme, and virtue, truth, and reason were her ‘adorable
daughters’. The effect of this approach was apparent in every sphere. In France
history, politics, and economics became a kind of ‘social physics’. The new
outlook can be seen in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws; thenceforth
the study of man’s institutions became a prolongation of natural science. The
emphasis fell increasingly on the practical consequences of knowledge: man is
endowed with reason, said Voltaire, ‘not that he may penetrate the divine
essence but that he may live well in this world’.”[24]
Voltaire said, “I am not an atheist, nor a
superstitious person; I stand for common sense and the golden mean”.[25]
“I believe in God, not the God of the mystics and the theologians, but the God
of nature, the great geometrician, the architect of the universe, the prime
mover, unalterable, transcendental, everlasting.”[26]
So far, so English. But the anti-religious zeal of many of the philosophes,
including Voltaire himself, was decidedly unEnglish. Moreover, an English
thinker would not have declared, with Diderot, that the aim of philosophy was
“to enlarge and liberate God”[27]
(not only man, but even God was supposedly in chains!!).
There was no place for the Church, or the
Christian concept of original sin in Voltaire’s philosophy: “Man is not born
wicked; he becomes wicked as he falls ill.”[28]
Rousseau also believed in the original goodness of man: all his evil comes from
civilization. And so the philosophers set about undermining the foundations of
civilization. Their first target was the Church – Écrazez
l’infâme!, said Voltaire. Montesquieu, Diderot and a host of others
followed him in mocking the sacraments and beliefs of believers.
The reaction of the Catholic Church in
France was firmer than that of the Anglican Church in England. Thus Archbishop
Beaumont of Paris wrote in 1762: “In order to appeal to all classes and
characters, Disbelief has in our time adopted a light, pleasant, frivolous
style, with the aim of diverting the imagination, seducing the mind, and
corrupting the heart. It puts on an air of profundity and sublimity and
professes to rise to the first principles of knowledge so as to throw off a
yoke it considers shameful to mankind and to the Deity itself. Now it declaims
with fury against religious zeal yet preaches toleration for all; now it offers
a brew of serious ideas with badinage, of pure moral advice with obscenities,
of great truths with great errors, of faith with blasphemy. In a word, it
undertakes to reconcile Jesus Christ with Belial.”[29]
The next target
was the State. The Enlightenment’s political creed was summed up by Barzun as
follows: “Divine right is a dogma without basis; government grew out of nature
itself, from reasonable motives and for the good of the people; certain
fundamental rights cannot be abolished, including property and the right of
revolution”.[30] However,
the philosophers did not at first attack the State so fiercely, hoping that
their own programme would be implemented by the “enlightened despots” of the
time. Moreover, until Rousseau’s theory of the General Will appeared, the
philosophers were wary of the destructive impact a direct attack on the State
could have.
What, then, was the constructive
programme of the philosophers? With what did they plan to replace the Church
and State? Surprisingly, perhaps, there were very few planned utopias in this
period. It was simply assumed that with the passing of prejudice, a golden age
would ensue automatically. So there was great emphasis on the future, but not
in the form of blueprints of a future society, but rather in the form of
rhapsodies on the theme of how posterity, seeing the world changed through education
and reason and law (“Legislation will accomplish everything”, said
Hélvetius), would praise the enlightened men of the present generation.
“God had been dethroned as judge, and
posterity was exalted in its stead. It would be more than a time of fulfilment;
it would provide the true vindication of the aspirations and endeavours of all
enlightened men. ‘Posterity,’ wrote Diderot, ‘is for the philosopher what the
other world is for the religious man.’”[31]
Thus the Age of Reason created its own
mythology of the Golden Age. Only it was to be in the future, not in the past.
And in this world, not the next. “The Golden Age, so fam’d by Men of Yore,
shall soon be counted fabulous no more”, said Paine. And “the Golden Age of
Humanity is not behind us”, said Saint Simon; “it lies ahead, in the perfection
of the social order”.
Thus “if the Enlightenment repudiated
‘supernatural, other-worldly, organized Christianity’,” writes Fr. Michael
Azkoul, “it believed in its own brave new world. The ‘great book of Nature’ had
recorded the means by which it was to be achieved. Professor Carl Becker shows
in his Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers that nature
was in fact not ‘the great book’ for them, but Augustine’s City of God
torn down and rebuilt with ‘up-to-date’ materials.’ For example, Eden was
replaced with ‘the golden age of Greek mythology,’ the love of God with the
love of humanity, the saving work of Christ with the creative genius of great
men, grace with the goodness of man, immortality by posterity or the veneration
of future generations… The vision of the Enlightenment, as Becker affirms, was
a secular copy, a distorted copy, of Christianity…”[32]
Enlightened Despotism
But let us turn
now to the period of “enlightened despotism”, when the ideals of the
Enlightenment appeared to work together with traditional forms of government.
The combination
of the two words “enlightened” and “despotism” is paradoxical, for the whole
thrust of the Enlightenment, as we have seen, was anti-despotic and
anti-authoritarian. And yet at precisely this time there came to power in
continental Europe of a series of rulers who were infected with the cult of
reason and democratism, on the one hand, but who ruled as despots, on the
other.
Enlightened despotism was made possible
because the official Churches – still, until the French Revolution, the main
“check” on government - had grown weak. Even the most despotic of earlier
rulers, such as Louis XIV, had made concessions to the power of the Church. For
example, Louis XIV’s rejection of Gallicanism and revocation of the Edict of
Nantes giving protection to the Huguenots was elicited by his need to retain
the support of the still-powerful Papacy. In France, the Catholic Church, if
not the Papacy as such, continued to be strong, which is one reason why the
struggle between the old and the new ideas and régimes was so intense
there, spilling over into the revolution of 1789. In other continental
countries, however, despotic rulers did not have to take such account of
ecclesiastical opposition to their ideas.
Their success
was aided by the demise of their main rivals, the Jesuits. Like the Jews, the
Jesuits were a kind of state within the states. In Paraguay they had even
created a hierocratic society under their control among the Indians.[33]
Rich, powerful and well-educated, they were a threat to despotic rulers even
when their nominal master, the Pope, had ceased to be.
And so, under
pressure from rulers, writes Davies, “Benedict XIV (1740-58), whose moderation
won him the unusual accolade of praise from Voltaire, initiated an inquiry into
their affairs. They were accused of running large-scale money-making
operations, also of adopting native cults to win converts at any price.[34]
In 1759 they were banished from Portugal, in 1764 from France, and in 1767 from
Spain and Naples. Clement XIII (1758-69) stood by the Society with the words Sint ut sunt,
aut non sint (may they be as they are, or cease
to be). But Clement XIV (1769-74), who was elected under the shadow of a formal
demand by the Catholic powers for abolition, finally acquiesced. The brief
Dominus ac Redemptor noster of 16 August 1773 abolished the Society of Jesus,
on the grounds that it was no longer pursuing its founder’s objectives. It took
effect in all European countries except for Russia.”[35]
Having removed
the priests who would be kings, the kings could now rule without any priestly
limitations on their power. Perhaps the first to begin this trend was the
adolescent Charles XII of Sweden, who, while not dispensing with the Church
altogether, nevertheless demonstrated that he was king whatever the Church
might do or not do about it. Thus at his coronation in 1697, writes Massie,
Charles “refused to be crowned as previous kings had been: by having someone
else place the crown on his head. Instead, he declared that, as he had been
born to the crown and not elected to it, the actual act of coronation was
irrelevant. The statesmen of Sweden, both liberal and conservative, and even
his own grandmother were aghast. Charles was put under intense pressure, but he
did not give way on the essential point. He agreed only to allow himself to be
consecrated by an archbishop, in order to accede to the Biblical injunction
that a monarch be the Lord’s Anointed, but he insisted that the entire ceremony
be called a consecration, not a coronation. Fifteen-year-old Charles rode to
the church with his crown already on his head.
“Those who
looked for omens found many in the ceremony… The King slipped while mounting
his horse with his crown on his head; the crown fell off and was caught by a
chamberlain before it hit the ground. During the service, the archbishop
dropped the horn of anointing oil. Charles refused to give the traditional royal
oath and then, in the moment of climax, he placed the crown on his own head…”[36]
Charles could
hardly be called an enlightened despot. But his successor, Gustavus
Adolphus III, was – until he was killed in 1792 by nobles, “outraged at a
programme of democratic despotism… [which] made the popular gestures constantly
being pressed upon Louis XVI by his secret advisers seem tame.”[37]
In neighbouring Germany the princes, who were in effect also first minister of
their Churches[38], were more
influenced by the French Enlightenment. Thus Frederick of Prussia dispensed
with any religious sanction for his rule and took the Enlightenment
philosophers for his guides. “I was born too soon,” he said, “but I have seen
Voltaire.”[39]
How could
despotism co-exist with the caustic anti-authoritarianism of Voltaire and the
other philosophes? It was a question of means and ends. If the aims of
the philosophes were “democratic” in the sense that they wished the
abolition of “superstition” and increased happiness for everybody through
education, the best – indeed the only – means to that end at that time was the
enlightened despot.
And it was not
only the philosophes who looked to the enlightened despots: as Hobsbawn
writes, “the middle and educated classes and those committed to progress often
looked to the powerful central apparatus of an ‘enlightened’ monarchy to
realize their hopes. A prince needed a middle class and its ideas to modernize
his state; a weak middle class needed a prince to batter down the resistance of
entrenched aristocratic and clerical interests to progress.”[40]
For “what
possible grounds could the philosophes have had for vesting political trust in the wisdom of the
people at large? Almost everywhere in Europe, the bulk of the population consisted
of illiterate peasants, labourers, and even serfs – all, to elitist eyes,
hopelessly ignorant, backward and superstitious, browbeaten by custom into an
unthinking deferential loyalty to throne and altar. The likes of Voltaire
habitually depicted the peasantry as hardly distinguishable from the beasts of
the field. Their point in making such unflattering comparisons was to criticise
a system that reduced humans to the level of brutes; but such comments betray a
mind for which the true question was not popular participation in government –
that did not seem a real priority – but whether the people were to be ruled
wisely or incompetently.”[41]
So the philosophes went to the kings – Voltaire to Frederick of
Prussia, Diderot to Catherine of Russia – and tried to make them into
philosopher-kings, as Plato had once tried with Dionysius of Syracuse. And the
kings were flattered to think of themselves in this light. But neither the
kings nor their philosopher advisers ever aimed to create democratic republics,
as opposed to more efficient monarchies.
“The
Continental philosophes of the High Enlightenment never made their prime demand
the maximisation of personal freedom and the reciprocal attenuation of the
state, in the manner of later English laissez-faire liberalism. For one thing,
a strong executive would be needed to maintain the freedom of subjects against
the encroachments of the Church and the privileges of the nobles. Physiocrats
such as Quesnay championed an economic policy of free trade, but recognised
that only a determined, dirigiste administration would prove capable of
upholding market freedoms against encroached vested interests. No continental
thinkers were attracted to the ideal of the ‘nightwatchman’ state so beloved of
the English radicals…
“It was the
thinkers of Germanic and Central Europe above all who looked to powerful,
‘enlightened’ rulers to preside over a ‘well-policed’ state. By this was meant
a regime in which an efficient, professional career bureaucracy comprehensively
regulated civic life, trade, occupations, morals and health, often down to
quite minute details.”[42]
Cragg writes:
“Certain characteristics were common to all the enlightened despotisms, but
each of the continental countries had its own particular pattern of
development. By the middle of the century, Frederick the Great had achieved a
pre-eminent position, and his brilliance as a military leader had fixed the
eyes of Europe on his kingdom. Prussia appeared to be the supreme example of
the benefits of absolute rule. But appearances were deceptive. Frederick had
indeed brought the civil service to a high degree of efficiency and had
organized the life of the country in a way congenial to a military martinet.
Though he was anxious to improve the peasants’ lot, he could not translate his
theories into facts. His reign resulted in an actual increase of serfdom. His
rule rested on assumptions that were already obsolete long before the advent of
the French Revolution. It is true that by illiberal means he achieved certain
liberal ends. He abolished torture; he promoted education; in the fields of
politics and economics he applied the principles of the Enlightenment. He had
no sympathy with Christianity and little patience with its devotees. He
regarded the service of the state as an adequate substitute for Christian faith
and life. He advocated toleration on the ground that all religious beliefs were
equally absurd…”[43]
Thus
toleration for all faiths, so long as they accepted “the service of the state”
as the supreme cult. Such a religion perfectly suited Frederick, who could only
understand religion in utilitarian terms, in terms of its usefulness to the
State. But was this really an adequate substitute for Christianity? Why should
the people serve the state? For material gain? But Frederick gave them only war
and serfdom. In any case, man cannot live by bread alone, and states cannot
survive through the provision of material benefits alone. The people need a
faith that justifies the state and the dominion of some men over others.
Christianity provided such a justification as long as the people believed in
it, and as long as the ruler could make himself out to be “the defender of the
faith”. But if neither the people nor the ruler believe in Christianity, what
can take its place? One alternative is the deification of the nation or state
itself, and this was the path Frederick’s successors took. But between
Frederick’s enlightened despotism and the Prussian nationalism of the
nineteenth century there was a logical and chronological gap. That gap was
filled by the teaching of Kant and Herder and Rousseau, the French revolution
and Napoleon…
We have
said that the philosophes like Voltaire and Diderot were happy to work
with the enlightened despots. However, this must be recognised as a purely
transitional phase, a tactical ploy which could not last long. For the
principles of the philosophes, carried to their logical conclusion, led
to the destruction of all monarchies.
This was
clearest in the case of Rousseau, as we shall see; but even in Diderot, the
friend of Catherine the Great, we find the following: “The arbitrary government
of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most
dangerous and the most surely seductive: they insensibly accustom a people to
love, respect and serve his successor, however wicked or stupid he might be. He
takes away from the people the right of deliberating, of willing or not
willing, of opposing even its own will when it ordains the good. However, this
right of opposition, mad though it is, is sacred… What is it that characterises
the despot? Is it kindness or ill-will? Not at all: these two notions enter not
at all into the definition. It is the extent of the authority he arrogates to
himself, not its application. One of the greatest evils that could befall a
nation would be two or three reigns by a just, gentle, enlightened, but
arbitrary power: the peoples would be led by happiness to complete
forgetfulness of their privileges, to the most perfect slavery…”[44]
“The right
of opposition, mad though it is, is sacred”… Here we find the true voice of the
revolution, which welcomes madness, horror, misery, bloodshed on an
unprecedented scale, so long as it is the expression of the right of opposition, that is, of
satanic rebelliousness. And that madness, that irrationality, that satanism, it
must not be forgotten, was begotten in the heart of the Age of Reason…
St. Theodore Sladich
Perhaps the best example of an enlightened
despot was the Austrian Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. During the preceding reign, that
of the Empress Maria Theresa (1741-1780), the Orthodox of Transylvania and the
Banat had suffered great persecution from the Austrian Catholics. Among those
martyred for the faith then were SS. Bessarion, Sophronius and Oprea, and the
Priests Moses and John.[45]
However, Joseph changed this policy, introducing a certain measure of religious
freedom: “Serfs were emancipated.
Religious toleration was extended to Uniates, Orthodox Protestants and Jews.
Children under nine were forbidden to work. Civil marriage and divorce were
permitted. Capital punishment was abolished. Freemasonry flourished. Wealth
which derived from the secularization of ecclesiastical property was reflected
in a spate of imperial and aristocratic architectural extravagance.”[46]
However, other measures introduced by
Joseph II caused great harm to the Orthodox. Thus in the life of the Serbian
Martyr Theodore Sladich we read: “In the late eighteenth century, many confused
Serbs who had grown weary under the Turkish yoke and who wanted nothing of the
Roman heresy, decided to turn to the ‘new’ ideas of the Enlightenment which
came first to Voyvodina from Western Europe via Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest,
and other European university centers. One of these ideas was the reduction of
the number of holy days celebrated, in order to facilitate new economic plans
and conditions. Some one hundred holy days were to be erased from the
liturgical calendar. Also, under the Turkish system, Serbian clerical education
was rather limited. Emperor Joseph II (1780-1790), ‘the enlightened despot’ in
Vienna, with the blessing of Metropolitan Moses Putnik (1781-1790) in Srenski
Karlovci (Lower Karlovac), advocated the closing of a number of monasteries in
order to generate revenue to build various educational institutions. One
supporter of this idea was the famous Serbian man of the Age of Reason,
Dositheus Obradovich (1739-1811). Beginning as a monk in the Monastery of New
Hopovo, he then left for Western Europe, returning to Vojvodina and later to
Serbia as a humanist philosopher, a fierce critic of Church practices, and as
Serbia’s first Minister of Education! In the end, this opting for the
rationalism of the so-called Western European Enlightenment created within the
pious Serbian peasantry a tremendous distrust of Church leadership, an abiding
disdain for Church life and practices, and a many-faceted regression which was
to last well into the nineteenth century.
“With all this in mind, it can now be
easily ascertained why pious Serbs everywhere especially venerate St. Theodore
Sladich. Quite often in his lifetime he was approached by both propagandists of
the Latin Unia and by Serbian converts to Western rationalism who wanted him to
leave the Church and embrace ‘modernistic’ ways of thought and living. Theodore
was an ardent Orthodoxy and, due to his love for liturgical ritual and the
vision of the doctrines of the Church, he became an outspoken proponent against
the Latin Unia and the rationalistic innovations of Western Europe… In regard
to rationalism and so-called ‘modern’ education, Theodore responded by
explaining that the source of every true knowledge flowed from the Church –
that all worldly knowledge can never replace that which a true Christian
receives in church, God Himself educates the believer wholly: by acting upon
his sight, hearing, smelling, feeling, taste, imagination, mind, and will, by
the splendor of the images and of the building in general, by the fragrance of
the incense, by the veneration of the Gospels, Cross and icons, by the singing
and by the reading of the Scriptures. And most importantly, as Theodore once
said: ‘In no way can secular education bring about the greatest mystery offered
by the Church: the cleansing from sins’.”[47]
St. Theodore and 150 followers were burned
to death by the Turks in 1788.
The Scot David Hume was unique among the
rationalist philosophers of the eighteenth-century in claiming to prove, by the
method of “experimental philosophy”, or reductionism, the irrationality of
reason itself – that is, considered on its own and without any other
support. His conclusion was that reason is in fact supplemented by faith.
But then he went on to show that faith – not only in God, but in any enduring,
objective reality – is itself a species of irrationalism.
Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature,
was written in 1739-40, shortly after he had had a nervous breakdown. It was
subtitled ‘An Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into
Moral Subjects’. This indicated the final end of the Enlightenment Programme:
to subdue absolutely everything, even religion and morality, to the
“experimental method”.
Hume first disposes of the idea of substance.
Since our idea of the external world is derived entirely from impressions of
sensation, and since we can never derive from sensation alone the idea of an
object existing independently of our sensations, such an idea does not
really exist at all. Instead, “the idea of a substance… is nothing but a
collection of simple ideas that are united by the imagination and have a
particular name assigned to them, by which we are able to recall, either to
ourselves or others, that collection.”[48]
Following the same reasoning, Hume also
disposes of the idea of the soul or self. There is no sense-impression which
corresponds to the idea of a permanently existing self. For “self or person is
not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ides are
supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self,
that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of
our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no
impression constant and invariable… and consequently there is no such idea.”[49]
The most famous example of Hume’s
reductionism ad absurdum is his analysis of causation. When we say that
A causes B, the word “causes” does not correspond to any impression of sensation.
All that we actually see is that events of the class A are constantly
followed by events of the class B. This constant conjunction of A and B
predisposes the mind, on seeing A, to think of B. Thus a cause in nature “is an
object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea
of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the
impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.”[50]
Russell has analysed Hume’s teaching into
two parts: “(1) When we say ‘A caused B’, all that we have a right to
say is that, in part experience, A and B have frequently appeared together or
in rapid succession, and no instance has been observed of A not followed or
accompanied by B. (2) However many instances we may have observed of the
conjunction of A and B, that give no reason for expecting them to be
conjoined on a future occasion, though it is a cause of this
expectation, i.e. it has been frequently observed to be conjoined with such an
expectation. These two parts of the doctrine may be stated as follows: (1) in
causation there is no indefinable relation except conjunction or succession;
(2) induction by simple enumeration is not a valid argument…
“If the first half of Hume’s doctrine is
admitted, the rejection of induction makes all expectation as to the future
irrational, even the expectation that we shall continue to feel expectations. I
do not mean merely that our expectations may be mistaken; that, in any
case, must be admitted. I mean that, taking even our firmest expectations, such
as that the sun will rise to-morrow, there is not a shadow of a reason for
supposing them more likely to be verified than not…”[51]
Thus empiricism is shown to be irrational.
As Copleston writes, “the uniformity of nature is not demonstrable by reason.
It is the object of belief rather than of intuition or demonstration.”[52]
We cannot help having such beliefs; for “whatever may be the reader’s opinion
at this present moment,.. an hour hence he will be persuaded there is both an
external and internal world.”[53].
However, such belief cannot be justified by reason; for it “is more properly an
act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative part of our natures.”[54]
Hume’s attitude to belief in God is
predictably agnostic, if not strictly atheistic. We cannot say that God is the
cause of nature because we have never seen a constant conjunction of God, on
the one hand, and nature, on the other. Also, “I much doubt,” he says, “that a
cause can be known only by its effect.”[55]
At most, Hume concedes, “the cause or causes of order in the universe probably
bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.”[56]
In Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion Hume wrote: “For aught we know a priori, matter may contain
the source, or spring, of order originally, within itself, as well as the mind
does.” As Edward Skidelsky points out, “This is the seed from which the various
19th-century theories of evolution – of which Darwin’s is only the
most famous – spring… After Hume, it is only a matter of time before
agnosticism reigns supreme. The perseverance of belief is attributed to mere
ignorance or else to a wilful ‘sacrifice of the intellect’. Unbelievers, on the
other hand, are congratulated for their disinterested pursuit of truth
‘wherever it may lead’.”[57]
Morality is disposed of as thoroughly as
the idea of God. The essential point is that “reason alone can never be a
motive to any action of the will”, and reason “can never oppose passion in the
direction of the will”. Or rather, reason can oppose a passion only in the
sense that it can direct the mind to other relevant motives or passions tending
in the opposite direction. For “it is from the prospect of pain or pleasure
that the aversion or propensity arises towards any object.”[58]
Hume’s conclusion is that “reason is, and ought to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey
them.”[59]
However, this is not necessarily a bad
thing. For “analysis of such desires as pride and humility, love and hate,
uncovered an internal feeling or sentiment called the ‘moral sense’. In
delineating the workings of propensities integral to human existence, Hume
noted that Christian theologians and Platonists alike had condemned the
appetites, the former deploring them as sinful, the latter demanding their
mastery by reason.For Hume, by contrast, feelings were the true springs of such
vital social traits as the love of family, attachment to property and the
desire for reputation. Pilloried passions like pride were the very cement of
society. Dubbing its denigrators ‘monkish’, Hume defended pride when well
regulated; indeed, magnanimity, that quality attributed to all the greatest
heroes, was ‘either nothing but a steady and well-establish’d pride and
self-esteem, or partakes largely of that passion’. Besides, ‘hearty pride’ was
essential to society, whose hierarchy of ranks, fixed by ‘our birth, fortume,
employments, talents or reputation’, had to be maintained if it were to
function smoothly. A person needed pride to acquit himself well in his station
– indiscriminate humility would reduce social life to chaos. Much that had
traditionally been reproved as egoistically immoral he reinstated as
beneficial.”[60]
The essential idea running through all
Hume’s reasoning is that, in Edwin Burt’s words, “Reason is a subjective
faculty which has no necessary relation with the ‘facts’ we seek to know. It is
limited to tracing the relations of our ideas, which themselves are already
twice removed from ‘reality’. And our senses are equally subjective, for they
can never know the ‘thing in itself’, but only an image of it which has in it
no element of necessity and certainty – ‘the contrary of every matter of fact
is still possible’.[61]
Hume’s significance lies in his rational
demonstration of the impotence of reason, of the fact that it can prove the
existence of nothing – not only of God, Providence and the immortal
soul, but even of material objects and causality, the bedrock of empirical
explanation. As Bertrand Russell writes: “Hume… developed to its logical
conclusion the empirical philosophy of Locke and Berkeley, and by making it
self-consistent made it incredible. He represents, in a certain sense, a dead
end: in his direction, it is impossible to go further.”[62]
But a dead-end for rationalism can only
mean an opening for irrationalism. If reason can only serve passion rather than
rule it, as Hume claimed, then the last moral barrier to the revolutionary
overturning of all traditional values would seem to be removed. And indeed, in
Paris, where Hume was fêted much more than his native Scotland, the
revolution against eighteenth-century rationalism was only a few years away.
Hume’s hard-headed empiricism extended
also to the sphere of political philosophy, where it at least had the virtue of
exposing the weak foundations on which the theory of the social contract was
based. Thus for Hume there never was any such thing as a “state of nature” –
“men are necessarily born in a family-society at least.”[63]
The initial bonds between men are not contractual, but sexual and parental.
“Natural appetite draws members of the two sexes together and preserves their
union until a new bond arises, their common concern for their offspring. 'In a
little time, custom and habit operating on the tender minds of the children
makes them sensible of the advantages which they reap from society, as well as
fashions them by degrees for it, by rubbing off those rough corners and
untoward affections which prevent their coalition.’ The family, therefore (or,
more accurately, the natural appetite between the sexes), is ‘the first and
original principle of human society’. The transition to a wider society is
effected principally by the felt need for stabilizing the possession of
external goods.”[64]
Men could continue living in primitive
societies like those of the American Indians without the formal structure of
government if it were not that quarrels over property led to the need for the
administration of justice. “The state of society without government is one of
the most natural states of men, and must subsist with the conjunction of many
families, and long after the first generation. Nothing but an increase of
riches and possessions could oblige men to quit it.”[65]
Later, quarrels between tribes lead to the emergence of war leaders. Then,
during the peace, the war leader continues to lead. And so an ad hoc
arrangement dictated by necessity and the need to survive would generate a
permanent government. This is a gradual, organic process propelled by
“necessity, inclination and habit” rather than an explicit, rational agreement.
Indeed, far from it being the case that
governments are formed from consent or the voluntary acquiescence of the
people, “’almost all the governments which exist at present, or of which there
remains any record in story, have been founded originally, either on usurpation
or conquest or both, without any pretence of a fair consent or voluntary
subjection of the people… The face of the earth is continually changing, by the
increase of small kingdoms into great empires, by the dissolution of great
empires into smaller kingdoms, by the planting of colonies, by the migration of
tribes. Is there anything discernible in all these events but force and violence?
Where is the mutual agreement or voluntary association so much talked of?’ Even
when elections take the place of force, what does it amount to? It may be
election by a few powerful and influential men. Or it may take the form of
popular sedition, the people following a ringleader who owes his advancement to
his own impudence or to the momentary caprice of the crowd, most of whom have
little of no knowledge of him and his capacities. In neither case is there a
real rational agreement by the people.”[66]
English political liberalism, we may recall, arose from the need to
justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Protestant William of Orange
usurped the throne of the Catholic James II. William’s rule was tacitly
consented to as being more in accord with natural law and reason than the
despotism of James II, who was deemed to have broken some kind of contract with
his citizens. But Hume undermines both the contractual and the rational
elements in this justification, reducing the whole duty of allegiance to naked
self-interest.
“Granted that there is a duty of political
allegiance, it is obviously idle to look for its foundation in popular consent
and in promises if there is little or no evidence that popular consent was ever
asked or given. As for Locke’s idea of tacit consent, ‘it may be answered that
such an implied consent can only have place where a man imagines that the
matter depends on his choice’. But anyone who is born under an established
government thinks that he owes allegiance to the sovereign by the very fact
that he is by birth a citizen of the political society in question. And to
suggest with Locke that every man is free to leave the society to which he
belongs by birth is unreal. ‘Can we seriously say that a poor peasant or artisan
has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or
manners and lives from day to day by the small wages which he acquires?’
“The obligation of allegiance to civil
government, therefore, ‘is not derived from any promise of the subjects’. Even
if promises were made at some time in the remote past, the present duty of
allegiance cannot rest on them. ‘It being certain that there is a moral
obligation to submit to government, because everyone thinks so, it must be as
certain that this obligation arises not from a promise, since no one whose
judgement has not been led astray by too strict adherence to a system of
philosophy has ever yet dreamt of ascribing it to that origin.’ The real
foundation of the duty of allegiance is utility or interest. ‘This interest I
find to consist in the security and protection which we can enjoy in political
society, and which we can never attain when perfectly free and independent.’
This holds good both of natural and of moral obligation. ‘It is evident that,
if government were totally useless, it never could have a place, and that the
sole foundation of the duty of allegiance is the advantage which it
procures to society by preserving peace and order among mankind.’ Similarly, in
the essay Of the Original Contract Hume observes: ‘If the reason be
asked of that obedience which we are bound to pay to government, I readily
answer, Because society could not otherwise subsist; and this answer is
clear and intelligible to all mankind.’
“The obvious conclusion to be drawn from
this view is that when the advantage ceases, the obligation to allegiance
ceases. ‘As interest, therefore, is the immediate sanction of government, the
one can have no longer being than the other; and whenever the civil magistrate
carries his oppression so far as to render his authority perfectly intolerable,
we are no longer bound to submit to it. The cause ceases; the effect must also
cease.’ It is obvious, however, that the evils and dangers attending rebellion
are such that it can be legitimately attempted only in cases of real tyranny
and oppression and when the advantages of acting in this way are judged to
outweigh the disadvantages.
“But to whom is allegiance due? In other
words, whom are we to regard as legitimate rulers? Originally, Hume thought or
inclined to think, government was established by voluntary convention. ‘The
same promise, then, which binds them (the subjects) to obedience, ties them
down to a particular person and makes him the object of their allegiance.’ But
once government has been established and allegiance no longer rests upon a
promise but upon advantage or utility, we cannot have recourse to the original
promise to determine who is the legitimate ruler. The fact that some tribe in
remote times voluntarily subjected itself to a leader is no guide to
determining whether William of Orange or James II is the legitimate monarch.
“One foundation of legitimate authority is
long possession of the sovereign power: ‘I mean, long possession in any
form of government, or succession of princes’. Generally speaking, there are no
governments or royal houses which do not owe the origin of their power to
usurpation or rebellion and whose original title to authority was not ‘worse
than doubtful and uncertain’. In this case ‘time alone gives solidity to their
right and, operating gradually on the minds of men, reconciles them to any
authority and makes it seem just and reasonable’. The second source of public
authority is present possession, which can legitimize the possession of power
even when there is no question of its having been acquired a long time ago.
‘Right to authority is nothing but the constant possession of authority,
maintained by the laws of society and the interests of mankind.’ A third source
of legitimate political authority is the right of conquest. As fourth and fifth
sources can be added the right of succession and positive laws, when the
legislature establishes a certain form of government. When all these titles to
authority are found together, we have the surest sign of legitimate
sovereignty, unless the public good clearly demands a change. But if, says
Hume, we consider the actual course of history, we shall soon learn to treat
lightly all disputes about the rights of princes. We cannot decide all disputes
in accordance with fixed, general rules. Speaking of this matter in the essay Of
the Original Contract, Hume remarks that ‘though an appeal to general
opinion may justly, in the speculative sciences of metaphysics, natural
philosophy or astronomy, be deemed unfair and inconclusive, yet in all
questions with regard to morals, as well as criticism, there is really no other
standard by which any controversy can ever be decided. To say, for example,
with Locke that absolute government is not really civil government at all is
pointless if absolute government is in fact accepted as a recognized political
institution. Again, it is useless to dispute whether the succession of the
Prince of Orange to the throne was legitimate or not. It may not have been
legitimate at the time. And Locke, who wished to justify the revolution of
1688, could not possibly do so on his theory of legitimate government being
founded on the consent of the subjects. For the people of England were not
asked for their opinion. But in point of fact William of Orange was accepted,
and the doubts about the legitimacy of his accession are nullified by the fact
that his successors have been accepted. It may perhaps seem to be an
unreasonable way of thinking, but ‘princes often seem to acquire a right
from their successors as well as from their ancestors.’”[67]
Thus just as Hume had argued that there
was no rational reason for believing in the existence of objects, or
causative forces, or the soul, or God, or morality, so he argued that there was
no rational reason for believing that a given government was legitimate. Or
rather, governments are legitimate for no other reason than that they survive,
whether by force or the acquiescence of public opinion. Their legitimacy is de
facto, as it were, rather than de jure – although, of course,
legitimacy is a juridical rather than a factual category. It is a matter of
what the people, whether individually or collectively, consider to be in their
self-interest; but since there is no objective way of measuring self-interest,
it comes down in the end to a matter of taste, of feeling. And since there is
no arguing about tastes, there is also by implication no arguing with a
revolutionary who wishes to destroy society to its foundations…
Hume’s demonstration of the irrationalism
of rationalism had one very important result: it aroused the greatest
philosopher of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant, from what he called his
“dogmatic slumbers”. Kant sought to re-establish some of the beliefs or
prejudices which Hume’s thorough-going scepticism had undermined.
To that end, he determined to subject
“pure reason itself to critical investigation”, answering the question: “what
and how much can understanding and reason know, apart from all experience?”[68]
He established that empirical reason can indeed know certain things, but that
the use of reason itself presupposes the existence of other things which
transcend reason. Thus “I think” must accompany all our experiences if they are
to be qualified as ours, so that there must be what Kant calls a
“transcendental unity of apperception” which unifies experience while being
beyond it. “There is thus a being above the world, namely the spirit of
man”[69],
which is not a substance in the empirical sense, nor subject to the empirical
causal nexus – although it is the seat of that which is greatest and truly
rational in man, including the famous sense of duty or “categorical
imperative”. And so, apart from the “phenomenal” realm of nature, which the
mind can understand only by imposing upon it the categories of substance,
causality and mutual interaction, there is also the “noumenal” realm of spirit
and freedom, which transcends nature and causality. Man himself is noumenally
free while being at the same time empirically (phenomenally) determined.
The exploration of the consequences of
this thesis would take philosophy far beyond the bounds of eighteenth-century
rationalism, into the realms of idealism, romanticism and nationalism.
It is significant that Kant is concerned
above all to provide grounds for believing in man’s freedom. We have
seen how the whole development of western thought from the Renaissance onwards
centres on the idea of freedom, of human autonomy and especially the autonomy
of human reason. However, this development has led, by the second half of the
eighteenth century, to a most paradoxical dead-end: to the conclusion that man,
being a part of nature, is not free, but determined, and that the exercise of
human reason is based on the most irrational leap of blind faith in substance
and causality, without which we could not be assured of the existence of
anything external to our own mind – which is in any case just a bundle of sensations.
Kant, by a supreme exercise of that same free reasoning faculty, stanches the
flow of irrationalism – but at a price: the price of making man a schizoid
creature living on a razor blade between the noumenal and phenomenal realms.
Yes, he says, man is a part of nature and determined, otherwise the science of
man and the whole Enlightenment project would be impossible (and Kant remains
an Enlightenment figure to the end). And yes, he says, man is free and
uncaused, otherwise Christianity and morality would be impossible (and Kant
remains a devout Lutheran to the end). But the balance and synthesis he
achieves between the two is hard to express and difficult to maintain; and
succeeding generations preferred to go in one direction or the other: some down
the Enlightenment path of seeking a Utopia on earth through science and
rational social organisation, and others down the Romantic path of irrational,
unfettered self-expression in both the private and the public spheres.
Thus “in his moral philosophy,” writes
Berlin, Kant lifted “the lid of a Pandora’s box, which released tendencies
which he was among the first, with perfect honesty and consistency, to disown
and condemn. He maintained, as every German schoolboy used to know, that the
moral worth of an act depended on its being freely chosen by the agent; that if
a man acted under the influence of causes which he could not and did not
control, whether external, such as physical compulsion, or internal, such as
instincts or desires or passions, then the act, whatever its consequences,
whether they were good or bad, advantageous or harmful to men, had no moral
value, for the act had not been freely chosen, but was simply the effect of
mechanical causes, an event in nature, no more capable of being judged in
ethical terms than the behaviour of a an animal or plant. If the determinism
that reigns in nature – on which, indeed, the whole of natural science is based
– determines the acts of a human agent, he is not truly an agent, for to act is
to be capable of free choice between alternatives; and free will must in that
case be an illusion. Kant is certain that freedom of the will is not illusory
but real. Hence the immense emphasis that he places on human autonomy – on the
capacity for free commitment to rationally chosen ends. The self, Kant tells
us, must be ‘raised above natural necessity’, for if men are ruled by the same
laws as those which govern the material world ‘freedom cannot be saved’, and
without freedom there is no morality.
“Kant insists over and over again that
what distinguishes man is his moral autonomy as against his physical heteronomy
– for his body is governed by natural laws, not issuing from his own inner
self. No doubt this doctrine owes a great deal to Rousseau, for whom all dignity,
all pride rest upon independence. To be manipulated is to be enslaved. A world
in which one man depends upon the favour of another is a world of masters and
slaves, of bullying and condescension and patronage at one end, and
obsequiousness, servility, duplicity and patronage at the other. But whereas
Rousseau supposes that only dependence on other men is degrading, for no one
resents the laws of nature, only ill will, the Germans went further. For Kant,
total dependence on non-human nature – heteronomy – was incompatible with
choice, freedom, morality. This exhibits a new attitude to nature, or at least
the revival of an ancient [supposedly] Christian antagonism to it. The thinkers
of the Enlightenment and their predecessors in the Renaissance (save for
isolated antinomian mystics) tended to look upon nature as divine harmony, or
as a great organic or artistic unity, or as an exquisite mechanism created by
the divine watchmaker, or else as uncreated and eternal, but always as a model
from which men depart at their cost. The principal need of man is to understand
the external world and himself and the place that he occupies in the scheme of
things: if he grasps this, he will not seek after goals incompatible with the
needs of his nature, goals which he can follow only through some mistaken
conception of what he is in himself, or of his relations to other men or the
external world…. Man is subject to the same kind of causal laws as animals and
plants and the inanimate world, physical and biological laws, and in the case
of men psychological and economic too, established by observation and
experiment, measurement and verification. Such notions as the immortal soul, a
personal God, freedom of the will, are for them metaphysical fictions and
illusions. But they are not so for Kant.
“The German revolt against France and
French materialism has social as well as intellectual roots. Germany in the
first half of the eighteenth century, and for more than a century before, even
before the devastation of the Thirty Years War, had little share in the great
renaissance of the West – her cultural achievement after the Reformation is not
comparable to that of the Italians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of
Spain and England in the age of Shakespeare and Cervantes, of the Low Countries
in the seventeenth century, least of all of France, the France of poets,
soldiers, statesmen, thinkers, which in the seventeenth century dominated
Europe both culturally and politically, with only England and Holland as her rivals.
What had the provincial German courts and cities, what had even Imperial
Vienna, to offer?
“This sense of relative backwardness, of
being an object of patronage or scorn to the French with their overweening
sense of national and cultural superiority, created a sense of collective
humiliation, later to turn into indignation and hostility, that sprang from
wounded pride. The German reaction at first is to imitate French models, then
to turn against them. Let the vain but godless French cultivate their ephemeral
world, their material gains, their pursuit of glory, luxury, ostentation, the
witty trivial chatter of the salons of Paris and the subservient court of
Versailles. What is the worth of the philosophy of atheists or smooth, worldly
abbés who do not begin to understand the true nature, the real purpose
of men, their inner life, man’s deepest concerns – his relation to the soul
within him, to his brothers, above all to God – the deep, the agonising
questions of man’s being and vocation? Inward-looking German pietists abandoned
French and Latin, turned to their native tongue, and spoke with scorn and
horror of the glittering generalities of French civilisation, the blasphemous
epigrams of Voltaire and his imitators. Still more contemptible were the feeble
imitators of French culture, the caricature of French customs and taste in the
little German principalities. German men of letters rebelled violently against
the social oppression and stifling atmosphere of German society, of the
despotic and often stupid and cruel German princes and princelings and their
officials, who crushed or degraded the humbly born, particularly the most
honest and gifted men among them, in the three hundred courts and governments
into which Germany was then divided.
“This surge of indignation formed the
heart of the movement that, after the name of a play by one of its members, was
called Sturm und Drang. Their plays were filled with cries of despair or
savage indignation, titanic explosions of rage or hatred, vast destructive
passions, unimaginable crimes which dwarf the scenes of violence even in
Elizabethan drama; they celebrate passion, individuality, strength, genius,
self-expression at whatever cost, against whatever odds, and usually end in
blood and crime, their only form of protest against a grotesque and odious
social order. Hence all these violent heroes – the Kraftmenschen,
Kraftschreiber, Kraftkersl, Kraftknaben – who march hysterically through
the pages of Klinger, Schubart, Leisewitz, Lenz, Heinse and even the gentle
Carl Philipp Moritz; until life began to imitate art, and the Swiss adventurer
Christoph Kaufmann, a self-proclaimed follower of Christ and Rousseau, who so
impressed Herder, Goethe, Hamann, Wieland, Lavater, swept through the German
lands with a band of unkempt followers, denouncing polite culture, and
celebrating anarchic freedom, transported by wild and mystical public
exaltation of the flesh and the spirit.
“Kant abhorred this kind of disordered
imagination, and, still more, emotional exhibitionism and barbarous conduct.
Although he too denounced the mechanistic psychology of the French
Encyclopaedists as destructive of morality, his notion of the will is that of
reason in action. He saves himself from subjectivism, and indeed irrationalism,
by insisting that the will is truly free only so far as it wills the dictates
of reason, which generate general rules binding on all rational men. It is when
the concept of reason becomes obscure (and Kant never succeeded in formulating
convincingly what this signified in practice), and only the independent will
remains man’s unique possession whereby he is distinguished from nature, that
the new doctrine becomes infected by the ‘stürmerisch’ mood. In Kant’s
disciple, the dramatist and poet Schiller, the notion of freedom begins to move
beyond the bounds of reason. Freedom is the central concept of Schiller’s early
works. He speaks of ‘the legislator himself, the God within us’, of ‘high,
demonic freedom’, ‘the pure demon within the man’. Man is most sublime when he
resists the pressure of nature, when he exhibits ‘moral independence of natural
laws in a condition of emotional stress’. It is will, not reason – certainly
not feeling, which he shares with animals – that raises him above nature, and
the very disharmony which may arise between nature and the tragic hero is not
entirely to be deplored, for it awakens man’s of his independence.”[70]
Thus to the thesis of the godless worship
of reason was opposed the antithesis of the demonic worship of will: western
civilisation had reached a dead-end. The one truly rational, but at the same
time life-giving “synthesis”, consisting in the free submission of the human
will to God as the Archetype and Author both of human freedom and of natural
necessity, was a way out of the dead-end that western man could not, or would
not, contemplate. Dissatisfied with the dry soullessness of the Enlightenment,
he would not go back to the sources of his civilization in Orthodoxy, only
forward to – the Revolution, and the hellish torments of the Romantic hero.
Thus if the image of the Enlightenment was
Voltaire, that of the Counter-Enlightenment was Byron, whose unfettered will
defied both the impediment of his deformed foot, which he saw “as the mark of
satanic connection”[71],
and all the laws of morality, of which the end, for a Christian consciousness,
could only be the hell he describes in “The Giaour”:
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like Scorpion girt with by fire;
So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death!
“Nowhere was German amour propre
more deeply wounded,” continues Berlin, “than in East Prussia, still
semi-feudal and deeply traditionalist; nowhere was there deeper resentment of
the policy of modernisation which Frederick the Great conducted by importing
French officials who treated his simple and backward subjects with impatience
and open disdain. It is not surprising, therefore, that the most gifted and
sensitive sons of this province, Hamman, Herder, and Kant too, are particularly
vehement in opposing the levelling activities of these morally blind imposers
of alien methods on a pious, inward-looking culture.”[72]
Hamann and Herder were the first thinkers explicitly to attack the whole
Enlightenment enterprise. This attack was perhaps the first sign of that great
cleavage within western culture that was to take the place of the
Catholic/Protestant cleavage: the cleavage between the classical, rationalist
and universalist spirit of the Latin lands, and the romantic, irrational and
particularist spirit of the Germanic lands (England with its dual Roman and
Germanic inheritance stood somewhere in the middle).
“Hamann,” writes Berlin, “was brought up
as a pietist, a member of the most introspective and self-absorbed of all the
Lutheran sects, intent upon the direction communion of the individual soul with
God, bitterly anti-rationalist, liable to emotional excess, preoccupied with
the stern demands of moral obligation and the need for severe self-discipline.
The attempt of Frederick the Great in the middle years of the eighteenth
century to introduce French culture and a degree of rationalisation, economic
and social as well as military, into East Prussia, the most backward of his
provinces, provoked a peculiarly violent reaction in this pious, semi-feudal,
traditional Protestant society (which also gave birth to Herder and Kant).
Hamann began as a disciple of the Enlightenment, but, after a profound
spiritual crisis, turned against it, and published a series of polemical
attacks written in a highly idiosyncratic, perversely allusive, contorted,
deliberately obscure style, as remote as he could make it from the, to him,
detestable elegance, clarity and smooth superficiality of the bland and
arrogant French dictators of taste and thought. Hamann’s theses rested on the
conviction that all truth is particular, never general: that reason is impotent
to demonstrate the existence of anything[73] and
is an instrument only for conveniently classifying and arranging data in
patterns to which nothing in reality corresponds; that to understand is to be
communicated with, by men or by God. The universe for him, as for the older
German mystical tradition, is itself a kind of language. Things and plants and
animals are themselves symbols with which God communicates with his creatures.
Everything rests on faith; faith is as basic an organ of acquaintance with
reality as the senses. To read the Bible is to hear the voice of God, who
speaks in a language which he has given man the grace to understand. Some men
are endowed with the gift of understanding his ways, of looking at the
universe, which is his book no less than the revelations of the Bible and the
fathers and saints of the Church. Only love – for a person or an object – can
reveal the true nature of anything. It is not possible to love formulae,
general propositions, laws, the abstractions of science, the vast system of concepts
and categories – symbols too general to be close to reality – with which the
French lumières have blinded themselves to the real experiences
which only direct acquaintance, especially by the senses, provides.
“Hamann glories in the fact that Hume had
successfully destroyed the rationalist claim that there is an a priori route to
reality, insisting that all knowledge and belief ultimately rest on
acquaintance with the date of direct perception. Hume rightly supposes that he
could not eat an egg or drink a glass of water if he did not believe in their
existence; the date of belief – what Hamann prefers to call faith – rest on
grounds and require evidence as little as taste or any other sensation. True
knowledge is direct perception of individual entities, and concepts are never,
no matter how specific they may be, wholly adequate to the fullness of the
individual experience. ‘Individuum est ineffabile’, wrote Goethe to Lavater in
the spirit of Hamann, whom Goethe profoundly admired. The sciences may be of
use in practical matters; but no concatenation of concepts will give an
understanding of a man, of a work of art, of what is conveyed by gestures,
symbols, verbal and non-verbal, of the style, the spiritual essence, of a human
being, a movement, a culture; nor for that matter of the Deity, which speaks to
one everywhere if only one has ears to hear and eyes to see.“[74]
Following up on these insights, Herder
“believed that to understand anything was to understand it in its individuality
and development, and that this required the capacity of Einfühling
(‘feeling into’) the outlook, the individual character of an artistic
tradition, a literature, a social organisation, a people, a culture, a period
of history. To understand the actions of individuals, we must understand the
‘organic’ structure of the society in terms of which alone the minds and
activities and habits of its members can be understood. Like Vico, he believed
that to understand a religion, or a work of art, or a national character, one
must ‘enter into’ the unique conditions of its life… To grade the merits of
cultural wholes, of the legacy of entire traditions, by applying a collection
of dogmatic rules claiming universal validity, enunciated by the Parisian
arbiters of taste, is vanity and blindness. Every culture has its own unique Schwerpunkt
(‘centre of gravity’), and unless we grasp it we cannot understand its
character or value…”[75]
As he wrote in Auch eine Philosophie:
“How unspeakably difficult it is to convey the particular quality of an
individual human being and how impossible it is to say precisely what
distinguishes an individual, his way of feeling and living; how different and
how individual [anders und eigen] everything becomes once his eyes see
it, once his soul grasps it, his heart feels it. How much depth there is in the
character of a single people, which, no matter how often observed, and gazed at
with curiosity and wonder, nevertheless escapes the word which attempts to
capture it, and, even with the word to catch it, is seldom so recognizable as
to be universally understood and felt. If this is so, what happens when one
tries to master an entire ocean of peoples, times, cultures, countries with one
glance, one sentiment, by means of one single word!”[76]
This admirable sensitivity to the unique
and unrepeatable was undoubtedly a needed corrective to the over-generalising
and over-rationalising approach of the French philosophes. And in
general Herder’s emphasis on warm, subjective feeling and the intuition of quality
- “Heart! Warmth! Blood! Humanity! Life!” “I feel! I am!”[77] –
was a needed corrective to the whole rationalist emphasis on cold clarity,
objectivity and the measurement of quantity that had come to dominate western
thought since Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. From now on, thanks in part
to Herder, western thought would become more sensitive to the aesthetically
intuited, as opposed to the scientifically analysed aspects of reality, to
organic, living, historical wholes as well as to inorganic, dead, ahistorical
parts.
Nevertheless, Herder was as unbalanced in
his way as the philosophes were in theirs. This is particularly evident in his
relativism, his idea that every nation and culture was not only unique, but
also incommensurable – that is, it could not be measured by universal standards
of truth and falsehood, right and wrong. As he wrote: “Not a man, not a
country, not a people, not a national history, not a State, is like another.
Hence the True, the Beautiful, the Good in them are not similar either.”[78] If
Herder has been unjustly accused of being an ancestor of German fascist
nationalism, he cannot so easily be absolved of being one of the fathers of the
modern denial of universal truths and values that has so eaten into and
corroded modern western civilization.
Another
Enlightenment figure who nevertheless, like Kant, opened the doors to the
Counter-Enlightenment was Rousseau. On the one hand, he was a social contract
theorist, a man of reason and science. On the other hand, he was a prophet of
the Romantic Will in its collective, national form – what he called the General
Will.
We have seen that while the French
Enlightenment philosophers were admirers of English liberalism, they still
believed in relatively unfettered state power concentrated in the person of the
monarch. That way, they believed, the light of reason and reasonableness would
spread most effectively downward and outward to the rest of the population.
Thus their outlook was still essentially aristocratic; for all their love of
freedom, they still believed in restraint and good manners, hierarchy and
privilege. Perhaps their Jesuit education had something to do with it.
Certainly, however much they railed against the despotism of the Catholic
Church, they were still deeply imbued with the Catholic ideals of order and
hierarchy.
However, Rousseau believed in power coming
from below rather than above. Perhaps his Swiss Calvinist upbringing had
something to do with that; for, as he wrote, “I was born a citizen of a free
State, and a member of the Sovereign [i.e. the Conseil
Général] of Geneva, which was considered sovereign by some”[79].
Certainly, the mutual hatred between Voltaire and Rousseau reflected to some
degree the differences between the (lapsed) Catholic and the (lapsed)
Calvinist, between the city fop and the peasant countryman[80],
between the civilized reformer and the uncouth revolutionary.
Rousseau set out to inquire “if, in the
civil order, there can be any sure and legitimate rule of administration”.[81]
He quickly rejected Filmer’s patriarchal justification of monarchy based on the
institution of the family: “The most ancient of all societies, and the only one
that is natural, is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the
father only so long as they need him for their preservation. As soon as this
need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the
obedience they owed, and the father released from the care he owed his children,
return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no
longer naturally, but voluntarily; and the family itself is then maintained
only by convention… The family then may be called the first model of political
societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children;
and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only to their own
advantage.”[82]
This argument is not convincing. First, a
child is neither free at birth, nor equal to his father. Secondly, the bond
between the father and the son continues to be natural and indissoluble even
after the child has grown up.[83]
Next, Rousseau disposes of the argument
that might is right. “To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will –
at the most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty?.. What kind of
right is that which perishes when force fails? If we must obey perforce, there
is no need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced to obey, we are
under no obligation to do so… Obey the powers that be. If this means yield to
force, it is a good precept, but superfluous: I can answer for its never being
violated. All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness: does
that mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor?… Let us then admit that
force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate
powers.
“Since no man has a natural authority over
his fellow, and force creates no right, we must conclude that conventions form
the basis of all legitimate authority among men.”[84]
Here we approach the social contract. But
Rousseau quickly disposes of the form of contract proposed by Hobbes, namely,
that men originally contracted to alienate their liberty to a king. This is an
illegitimate argument, says Rousseau, because: (a) it is madness for a whole
people to place itself in slavery to a king, “and madness creates no right”;
(b) the only possible advantage would be a certain tranquillity, “but
tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them
desirable”[85]; and (c)
“if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they
are born men and free.” In any case, “to renounce liberty is to renounce being
a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.. Such a
renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his
will is to remove all morality from his acts… so, from whatever aspect we
regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being
illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave
and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will
always be equally foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: ‘I make
with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I
shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.’”[86]
We may interrupt Rousseau at this point to
note that his concept of freedom, being “positive” rather than “negative”, led
to very different consequences from the freedom of the English empiricists or
French philosophes. Freedom was for Rousseau, as for Kant, a – or
rather, the - categorical imperative, and the foundation of all
morality. “Both Rousseau and Kant, writes Norman Hampson, “aspired to
regenerate humanity by the free action of the self-disciplined individual
conscience”. Rousseau’s concept of freedom “rested, not on any logical
demonstration, but on each man’s immediate recognition of the moral imperative
of his own conscience. ‘I hear much argument against man’s freedom and I
despise such sophistry. One of these arguers [Helvétius?] can prove to
me as much as he likes that I am not free; inner feeling, more powerful than
all his arguments, refutes them all the time.’”[87]
In true Protestant fashion, Rousseau’s
conscience was to him both Pope and Church: “Whatever I feel to be right is
right, what I feel to be wrong is wrong; the best of all casuists is the
conscience… Reason deceives us only too often and we have earned all too well
the right to reject it, but conscience never deceives… Conscience, conscience,
divine instinct, immortal and heavenly voice, sure guide to men who, ignorant
and blinkered, are still intelligent and free; infallible judge of good and ill
who shapes men in the image of God, it is you who form the excellence of man’s
nature and the morality of his actions; without you, I feel nothing within that
raises me above the beasts, nothing but the melancholy privilege of straying
from error to error, relying on an understanding without rule and a reason
without principle.”[88]
Now conscience, according to Rousseau, was
likely to be stifled by too much education and sophistication. So he went back
to the idea of the state of nature as expounded in Hobbes and Locke, but
invested it with the optimistic, revolutionary spirit of the Levellers and
Diggers. Whereas Hobbes and Locke considered the state of nature as an anarchic
condition which civilization as founded on the social contract transcended and
immeasurably improved on, for Rousseau the state of nature was “the noble
savage”, who, as the term implied, had many good qualities. Indeed, man in the
original state of nature was in many ways better and happier than man as
civilized through the social contract. In particular, he was freer and more
equal. It was the institutions of civilization that destroyed man’s original
innocence and freedom. As Rousseau famously thundered: “Man is born free, and
everywhere he is in chains!” [89]
This concept did not stand the test of
experience. “Among those who believed in Rousseau’s ideas,” writes Fr. Alexey
Young, “was the French painter Gaughin (1848-1903). So intent was his
commitment that he abandoned his family and went to Tahiti to find Rousseau’s
‘noble savage’. But, to his great dismay, he discovered that Rousseau’s
conception was an illusion. ‘Primitive’ man could be just as cruel, immoral and
heartless as men under the influence of the civilized world. Seeing this,
Gaughin was driven to despair…”[90]
Since man is born free, according to
Rousseau, and his conscience is infallible, the common, unsophisticated man is
fully equal as a moral agent to his educated social superiors and should be
entrusted with full political power. Thus the social contract should be rewritten
to keep sovereignty with the ruled rather than the rulers. For Hobbes, the
people had transferred sovereignty irrevocably to their rulers; for Locke, the
transfer was more conditional, but revocable only in exceptional circumstances.
For Rousseau, sovereignty was never really transferred from the people.
Rousseau rejected the idea that the people
could have “representatives” who exerted sovereignty in their name.
“Sovereignty cannot be represented, for the same reason that it cannot be
alienated… the people’s deputies are not, and could not be, its
representatives; they are merely its agents; and they cannot decide anything
finally. Any law which the people has not ratified in person is void; it is not
law at all. The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely
mistaken; it is free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon
as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing.”[91]
Thus representative government is “elective autocracy”.
Essentially Rousseau wanted to abolish the
distinction between rulers and ruled, to give everyone power through direct
democracy. The citizen can exercise this power only if he himself makes every
decision affecting himself. But the participation of all the citizens in every
decision is possible only in a small city-state like Classical Athens, not in
modern states. Thus Rousseau represents a modern, more mystical version of the
direct democratism of the Greek philosophers. He echoes Aristotle’ Politics:
“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in
democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the
government to the utmost.”
And yet there was a modern state that
seemed to promise the kind of mystical, direct democracy that Rousseau pined
for – Corsica, which in 1755 threw off the centuries-old yoke of Genoa and
created its own constitution. In Corsica,” writes Zamoyski, “Rousseau believed
he had found a society untainted by the original sin of civilization. In his Project
de constitution pour la Corse, written in 1765, he suggested ways of
keeping it so. ‘I do not want to give you artificial and systematic laws,
invented by man; only to bring you back under the unique laws of nature and
order, which command to the heart and do not tyrannize the free will,’ he
cajoled them. But the enterprise demanded an act of will, summed up in the oath
to be taken simultaneously by the whole nation: ‘In the name of Almighty God
and on the Holy Gospels, by this irrevocable and sacred oath I unite myself in
body, in goods, in will and in my whole potential to the Corsican Nation, in
such a way that I myself and everything that belongs to me shall belong to it
without redemption. I swear to live and to die for it, to observe all its laws and
to obey its legitimate rulers and magistrates in everything that is in
conformity with the law.’”[92]
Now one of the problems of democratic
theory lies in the transition from the multitudinous wills of the individual
citizens to the single will of the state: how was this transition to be
effected without violating the will of the individual? Rousseau recognised this
problem: “The problem is to find a form of association which will defend an
protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and
in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone,
and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem of which the
social contract provides the solution.”[93]
This is a major, indeed insuperable problem
for most liberal theorists insofar as they recognise that individuals have
different interests and therefore different wills, so that any single decision
expressing what we may call the collective will of the state will inevitably be
in the interests of some and not in the interests of others. For Rousseau,
however, it is less of a problem insofar as he holds a much more optimistic
(and, his critics would say, wholly unrealistic) view of human nature. For since each individual citizen has an
infallible conscience, if each individual finds and expresses that infallible
conscience, his will will be found to coincide with the will of every other
individual citizen. This general will will then express the will of
every citizen individually while being common to all of them collectively.
This general will is not the will
of the majority; for that will is by definition not the will of the minority,
and the general will must embrace all. Nor, more surprisingly, is it the
will of all when all agree; for the will of all is sometimes wrong, whereas the
general will is always right. “The general will is always upright and always
tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of
the people always have the same rectitude. Our will is always for our own good,
but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is
often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the
general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former
takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular
wills: but take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel
one another, and the general will remains as the sum of the differences.”[94]
The general will is a certain mysterious
entity which reveals itself in certain special conditions: “If, when the
people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations, the
citizens had no communication one with the another, the grand total of the
small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would
always be good.”[95] In other
words, when the self-interest of each citizen is allowed to express itself in
an unforced manner, without the interference of external threats and pressures,
a certain highest common denominator of self-interest, what Russell calls “the
largest collective satisfaction of self-interest possible to the community”[96],
reveals itself. This is the general will, the wholly infallible revealed
truth and morality of the secular religion of the revolution.
What are the conditions for the appearance
of the general will? The fundamental condition is true equality among the
citizenry, especially economic equality. For where there is no equality, the
self-interest of some carries greater weight than the self-interest of others.
This is another major difference between Rousseau and the English and French
liberals. They did not seek to destroy property and privilege, but only to
prevent despotism; whereas he is a much more thorough-going egalitarian.
This first condition is linked to a second
condition, which is the absence of “partial associations” or parties. For the
wills of partial associations, which come together as expressing some common
economic or class interest, conflict with the will of the community as a whole.
For “when intrigues arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense
of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes
general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to
the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as there
are men, but only as many as there are associations. The differences become
less numerous and give a less general result. Lastly, when one of these
associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no
longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case there
is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is purely
particular. It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to
make itself known, that there should be no partial society in the state and
that each citizen should express only his own opinion.”[97]
A third condition (here Rousseau harks
back again to Athens) is that the citizen body should consist only of men. For
women, according to Rousseau, are swayed by “immoderate passions” and require
men to protect and guide them.[98]
Such a system appears at first sight
remarkably libertarian and egalitarian (except in regard to women).
Unfortunately, however, the other side of its coin is that when the general
will has been revealed – and in practice this means when the will of the
majority has been determined, for “the votes of the greatest number always bind
the rest”, – there is no room for dissent. For in joining the social contract,
each associate alienates himself, “together with all his rights, to the whole
community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the
conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one has any interest in
making them burdensome to others. Moreover, the alienation being without
reserve, the unions is as perfect as it can be, and no associate has anything
more to demand: for, if the individuals retained certain rights, as there would
be no common superior to decided between them and the public, each, being on
one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus
continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or
tyrannical. Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to
nobody; and as there is no associate over which he does not acquire the same
right as he yields over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he
loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has…”[99]
“In order then that the social compact may
not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can
give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be
compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will
be forced to be free…”[100]
Forced to be free – here the
totalitarian potentialities of Rousseau’s concept of positive freedom become
painfully clear. And its full meaning in practice was to be revealed in a very
few years, during the French Revolution. Thus of all the eighteenth-century
philosophers, Rousseau is the real prophet of the revolution; the others, especially
Voltaire, paved the way for it, but it was Rousseau who gave it its
justification, its metaphysical, quasi-mystical first principle.
But the most striking characteristic of
this principle, considering it was proclaimed in “the Age of Reason”, was its irrationality.
For the general will was not to be deduced or induced by any logical or
empirical reasoning, nor identified with any specific empirical phenomenon or
phenomena. It was not the concrete will of any particular man, or collection of
men, but a quasi-mystical entity that welled up within a particular society and
propelled it towards truth and righteousness.
And this accorded with the anti-rational,
passionate nature of the whole of Rousseau’s life and work. As Hume said of
him: “He has only felt during the whole course of his life.”[101]
Thus the philosophers of the Age of Reason believed, or did not believe, in God
or the soul or the Divine Right of kings, because they had reasons for
their belief or unbelief. For Rousseau, on the other hand, religion was just a
feeling; and as befitted the prophet of the coming Age of Unreason, he believed
or disbelieved for no reason whatsoever. So religious belief, or the
lack of it, was not something that could be objectively established or argued about.
As Barzun writes: “Rousseau reminds the reader that two-thirds of mankind are
neither Christians nor Jews, nor Mohammedans, from which it follows that God
cannot be the exclusive possession of any sect or people; all their ideas as to
His demands and His judgements are imaginings. He asks only that we love Him
and pursue the good. All else we know nothing about. That there should be
quarrels and bloodshed about what we can never know is the greatest impiety.”[102]
Superficially, this irrationalist attitude
seems similar to that of Pascal, who said: “The heart has its reasons, of which
reason is ignorant”. But Pascal, while pointing to the limits of reason, had
not abandoned reason; he sought the truth with every fibre of his being, both
the reasoning and the passionate parts of it. Rousseau, on the other
hand, in both his life and his work, appeared quite deliberately to abandon
reason and surrender himself to irrational forces. In these forces he saw
freedom and nobility, while others saw only slavery to the basest instincts.
The revolution would soon allow the world to judge the truth for itself...
Rousseau’s concept of the general, or
people’s will is so important that it is worth examining it in a little more detail
through the eyes of the famous revolutionary-turned-monarchist philosopher, Lev
Alexandrovich Tikhomirov. Tikhomirov points out that eighteenth-century ideas
about society, though pagan and materialist in essence, can nevertheless not be
understood except in the context of the Christian society that Western Europe
still was – or, more precisely, “a Christian society, but one that has
renounced Christ”, to use Aksakov’s phrase. Thus “in the very concept of the 18th
century about society there is a clearly materialised reminiscence of the
Church. From the Church was copied the idea of society as a certain
collectivity defined exclusively by the spiritual nature of man. The
cosmopolitanism of the new society, its mysterious people’s will, which
as it were saturates it completely, which in some incomprehensible way rules
all while remaining infallible in all its private mistakes, - all these are
echoes of the Christian Church. They are in all points ‘the Kingdom that is not
of this world’, which is squeezed into, without being contained in, the bounds
precisely of ‘this world’…
“Contemporary society, torn apart by this
basic contradiction, is not conscious of it intellectually and even denies it.
The materialist understanding of life is so strongly rooted that people for the
most part are simply incapable of seriously paying attention to the
action of the spiritual element. ‘What contradiction is here?’ they say. ‘In
truth, the valuable element of Christianity is constituted by its moral
concepts and its lofty conception of personality. And it is this that
the new era has held onto. It has cast out only the outdated, mystical element
of Christianity. Isn’t that natural? Isn’t that how all progress comes about in
the world, holding on to everything valuable from the past and throwing out the
unnecessary old rags?’ In this, however, the present age is mistaken. It
doesn’t understand that it is impossible to throw out the mystical principles
from Christianity without thereby destroying the social significance of the
personality created by it. Historically Christian moral concepts have to the
highest degree exerted a positive influence on earthly, social life. However
this takes place only when the Christian remains completely a Christian, that
is, when he lives not for this earthly life, and does not seek the realisation
of his ideals in this life, does not put his soul into it. It turns out
completely differently if the Christian remains without guidance by Divine
authority, without a spiritual life on earth and without this spiritual
activity of his having its final ends beyond the grave. Then he remains with
infinite demands before an extremely finite world, which is unable to satisfy
them. He remains without discipline, because he knows nothing in the world
higher than his own personality, and he bows before nothing if for him there is
no God. He is not capable of venerating society as a material phenomenon, nor
bow down even before a majority of personalities like his, because from their
sum there still emerges no personality more lofty than his own. The lot and
social role of such a person is extremely unhappy and harmful. He is either an
eternal denier of real social life, or he will seek to satisfy his strivings
for infinity in infinite pleasures, infinite love of honour, in a striving for
the grandiose which so characterises the sick 18th and 19th
centuries. The Christian without God is completely reminiscent of Satan. Not in
vain did the image of unrestrained pride so seduce the poets of the 18th
century. We all – believers or non-believers in God – are so created by Him, so
incapable of ripping out of ourselves the Divine fire planted by Him, that we
involuntarily love this spiritual, immeasurably lofty personality. But let us
look with the cold attention of reason. If we need only to construct well our
earthly, social life, if nothing else exists, then why call those qualities and
strivings lofty and elevated which from an earthly point of view are only
fantastic, unhealthy, having nothing in common with earthly reality? These are
the qualities of an abnormal person. He is useful, they will say, for his
eternal disquietude, his striving for something different, something other than
that which is. But this striving would be useful only if his ideals were basically
real. But the disquietude of the Christian deprived of God knocks the world out
of the status quo only in order to drag it every time towards the materially
impossible.
“They err who see in the 18th
and 19th centuries the regeneration of ancient ideas of the State.
The pagan was practical. His ideals were not complicated by Christian strivings
for the absolute. His society could develop calmly. But the lot of a society
that is Christian in its moral type of personality, but has renounced Christ in
the application of its moral forces, according to the just expression of A.S.
Aksakov, will be reduced to eternal revolution.
“This is what the 18th
century’s attempt to create a new society also came to. Philosophy succeeded in
postulating an ideal of society such as a personality forged by eighteen
centuries of Christian influence could agree to bow down to. But what was this
society? A pure mirage. It was constructed not on the real laws and foundations
of social life, but on fictions logically deduced from the spiritual nature of
man. Immediately they tried to construct such a society, it turned out that the
undertaking was senseless. True, they did succeed in destroying the old
historical order and creating a new one. But how? It turned out that this new
society lives and is maintained in existence only because it does not realise
its illusory bases, but acts in spite of them and only reproduces in a new form
the bases of the old society.
“It is worth comparing the factual
foundations of the liberal-democratic order with those which are ascribed to it
by its political philosophy. The most complete contradiction!
“Rousseau, of course, was fantasising when
he spoke of the people’s will as supposedly one and always wants only the good
and never goes wrong. But one must not forget that he was not speaking of that
people’s will which our deputies, voters and journalists talk about. Rousseau
himself grew up in a republic and he did not fall into such traps. He carefully
qualified himself, saying that ‘there is often a difference between the will
of all (volonté de tous) and the general will (volonté
générale).
“Rousseau sincerely despised the will of
all, on which our liberal democratism is raised. Order and administration are
perfect, he taught, only when they are defined by the general will, and
not by the egoistic, easily frightened and bribed will of all. For the
creation of the new, perfect society it is necessary to attain the discovery
and activity precisely of the general will.
“But how are we to attain to it? Here
Rousseau is again in radical contradiction with the practice of his disciples.
He demands first of all the annihilation of private circles and parties. ‘For
the correct expression of the general will it is necessary that there should be
no private societies in the State and that every citizen should express only
his own personal opinion’ (n’opine que d’après lui). Only in this
case does one receive a certain sediment of general will from the
multitude of individual deviations and the conversation always turns out well.
With the appearance of parties everything is confused, and the citizen no
longer expresses his own will, but the will of a given circle. When such
individual interests begin to be felt and ‘small societies (circles, parties)
begin to exert influence on the large (the State), the general will is no
longer expressed by the will of all’. Rousseau therefore demands the
annihilation of parties or at least their numerical weakening. As the most
extreme condition, already unquestionably necessary, it is necessary that there
should exist no party which would be noticeably stronger than the rest. If even
this is not attained, if ‘one of these associations (parties) is so great as to
dominate all the others, then the general will no longer exists and the only
opinion that is realisable is the individual opinion.’
“In other
words, democracy, the rule of the people’s will, no longer exists.
“Just as decisively and insistently does
Rousseau demonstrate that the people’s will is not expressed by any representation.
As a sincere and logical democrat, he simply hates representation, he cannot
denounce it enough. When the citizens are corrupted, he says, they establish a
standing army so as to enslave society, and they appoint representatives so
as to betray it.
“He also reasons about representative rule
in the section on the death of the political organism. Neither the people’s
autocracy, he says, nor the people’s will can be either handed over or represented
by the very nature of things.
“It is not difficult to imagine what
Rousseau would have said about our republics and constitutional monarchies,
about the whole order of liberal democratism, which is maintained in existence
exclusively by that which its prophet cursed. This order is wholly based on representation,
it is unquestionably unthinkable without parties, and, finally, the
administration of the country is based unfailingly on the dominance of
one or another party in parliament. When there is no such dominance,
administration is ready to come to a stop and it is necessary to dissolve
parliament in the hope that the country will give the kind of representation in
which, in the terminology of Rousseau, there exists no people’s will, but only
‘individual opinion’.
“And this political system, as the height
of logicality, is consecrated by the all-supporting fiction of the people’s
will!…”
Thus Rousseau’s political philosophy is
not democratic as that term is usually understood. And yet his concept of the
people’s will has had enormous influence on the history of democracy.
“Properly speaking, the principle of the
people’s will requires direct rule by the people. Even on this condition
the principle would not produce any good results. In Switzerland there is the
right of appeal to the people’s vote (referendum) and the presentation of the
basic laws for confirmation to the direct vote of the people. No useful
results proceed from this for the reasonableness of the law; moreover, the
practice of such luxury of democratism is possible only in very unusual
circumstances. In essence this is a system of ‘self-indulgence’, and not a
serious resource of legislative construction.
“But the most important question is: what
is this ‘people’s will’? Where, and in what, does it really exist? The
people firmly wants one thing: that things should go well. A people with
a history, which constitutes something united in distinction from its
neighbours, which has not yet been shattered into insuperably hostile groups,
has another will; that affairs in the country should go in a familiar spirit
to which it is historically accustomed and which it trusts.
“And then in the innumerable individual
cases out of whose solution the government is formed, the people has no will
except in extreme cases – such as war or peace or the handing over of its
salvation to such-and-such a popular person…. But in the everyday questions of
government there is no people’s will. How can I have a will in relation to
that of which I have no comprehension? In every question a few think well, a
few think something, and 99 out a hundred – exactly nothing. Ivan has some
understanding of one question, but Theodore not, while on another Theodore has
some ideas, but Ivan not. But in each case there is the huge majority which
understands nothing and has no other will except the will that everything
should go well.
“It is from this majority that they demand
that it should express its own opinion and its own will! But, you know, it’s
simply comical, and besides harmful. Let us suppose that there are a hundred
people who understand the given question, and several million who do not. To
demand a decision from the majority means only to drown the hundred knowing
voices in the hundreds of thousands who have no thoughts on the matter!
“The people, they say, can listen to those
who know; after all, it wants the best for itself. Of course. But the people
who are know are, in the first place, occupied with their work, which is
precisely why they are familiar with the question; secondly, they by no means
exercise their capabilities in oratory or the technique of agitation. In
connection with the art of stultifying the crowd, flattering it, threatening
it, attracting – this disastrous, poisonous art of agitation – people will always
be beaten down by those who have specially devoted themselves to political
intrigue. And people are specially chosen to be intriguers, they are suitable
for this trade because of their innate capabilities; they then exercise their
capabilities; and then finally they are shaped into a party… But how is
the man of action to fight against them? This is quite impossible, and in fact
the people that is placed in this situation always goes, not for those
who know, but for those who are skilled in political intrigue. It plays a most
stupid role and cannot get out of it, even if they are completely aware of
their stupid situation. I, for example, completely understand the role of the
political intriguer and despise it, but if they were to force me to give my
vote for measures which I am personally unable to weigh up myself, then
of course I have not the slightest doubt that I would be fooled, and crafty
people would shield me from the people who know and are honourable.
“Such is the reality of the
people’s will. It is a toy of crafty people even if we have unmediated
rule by the people. But unmediated rule by the people is practically
impossible. It is impossible to collect, and it is impossible to turn the whole
people into legislators. Somebody has to sow the bread and work in the
factories. Finally, everyone has his own private life, which is dearer to him
than politics. In generally, one has to resort to representation.
“Theoretically this is senseless. One can
hand over one’s right as a citizen. But one cannot hand over one’s will. After all, I’m handing it over for future
time, for future decisions, on questions which have not yet arisen. Therefore
in choosing a deputy, I give him the right to express that will of mine which I
do not yet myself know. Electing representatives would have a realisable
meaning only if I were to hand over my right as a citizen, that is, if I simply
said that I entrust the given person to carry out my political affairs and that
I will not quarrel with or contradict whatever he does lawfully until the end
of his term of office. But such a handing over of the very right of the
people’s autocracy is the idea of Caesarism, and not parliamentarism.
Parliamentarism requires from the country representatives of its will,
opinion and desire – that is, something impossible, an obvious deception.
In sending its deputies, the country does not renounce its will for the term of
their office. If, for example, our deputy, even if he were Ferri, should out of
deep conviction consider it necessary to send an expedition to the Bay of
Tonkin, and we, the voters, do not want this, then, according to the theory,
Ferri must lay down his deputyship. If the president of the republic supposes
that his chamber does not express the will of the country, he will dissolve it
and demand new representatives from the country. He demands that it should be
precisely the country’s will that is expressed.
“And so the country is offered elections.
But whom will it send?
“First of all, there is still the question: who will want to become a
deputy?
“In extreme cases, when the salvation of
the fatherland is required (in 1612 in Russia, in 1789 in France, in 1871 in
France again), in extreme cases generally, which demand a temporary and
moreover very necessary exploit of self-sacrifice, of course the better people
will want to become deputies, the representatives not of that will which
the democratic theory demands, but of the spirit and capacities of the
country, its genius, - the flower of the nation will come to the help of
the fatherland. It will express the spirit of the nation, the maximum of
its capacities; therefore the crowd in such decisions will recognise, not is will,
but its ideal, not what it may want by its own poor discrimination, but
what it would want if it was mindful. It highly estimates this mind (for it is
in its spirit), it recognises its decisions and supports them. But this is a triumphant
moment of history.
“During simple administration and
ordering of affairs nothing of the sort takes place or can take place. The
flower of the nation – the real representatives of its genius and its greatness
are occupied with their own affairs: the scientist, the doctor, the
technician, the factory-owner, the worker of the land – all these are occupied
with their own affairs and will not give them up because they love it, they put
their whole soul into it. It is only because they are the best people
that they have this feeling. In an ordinary time the representatives of the
genius of the nation do not become deputies, especially parliamentary deputies.
A parliamentary deputy is obliged to express another person’s will.
For a man with his own ideas this is not at all enticing, quite the opposite.
He will enter a Constitutive Assembly, but not a parliament. He will
rather remain at his own work and with his own ideas… Generally speaking, for a
person who is able to make his own way in something more useful, the significance
of being a deputy is not enticing. Moreover, it requires such external
capacities as most of the best people do not have. Glibness of speech,
pushyness, a capacity for intrigue, superficial convictions. Such are the
people who are elected for the trade of representation.
“In elections they will most easily be
successful, even the first time, when there are not yet any solidly
based parties. But parties have longer ago been formed – also out of necessity.
Since there is no general people’s will in everyday administrative
matters, it has to be created for the people, the people has to be convinced,
and it is easier and more convenient to do this when the whole of the nation’s
complicated life has been broken down into separate elements and principles,
and then out of each a programme is constructed by logical deduction. It
is hard for the elector to grasp the complex whole; as an average person, he
does not posses a very broad mind or wide knowledge. But when he is presented
with a simplified party programme, it dawns on, he is forced to think that he
has understood everything. But the competition of those seeking deputyship
forces the thinking of up of programmes for which there is not even any
foundation in real life. Otherwise why would I recommend that the people elect
me, and not my competitor? It is necessary to put forward something special
which distinguishes me from the others.
“Thus parties and political programmes
would without fail arise and be composed, even if national life were still whole.
Political intriguers will undoubtedly first cut it up in programmes, and them –
because of their activity – the cutting up of national integrity will take root
in reality as far as possible…
“In general, in laying claim to the
deputyship, I must join some party. I will be pushed forward not by the people,
but by the party. I will be obliged to it for everything, I will depend on it,
I will have to take it into account. The people is – for him who is being
elected – the last thing to worry about. It has to be incited to give
its vote, but it is not at all necessary to learn what its vote is. The
election campaign is a hunt for votes, but in no way a poll of the
people. Hares are not asked whether they want to land up on the table, they are
caught; their own desires are interesting only in order to clarify how
precisely they can best be caught. That is exactly how interested they are in
the people during elections.
“And so the candidacies are put forward.
Noise, fuss, walls plastered with proclamations and names, journeys,
conferences, false rumours, mutual slanders, loud words, avaricious promises,
promises that are consciously false, bribes, etc. The people goes crazy: before
it knew little, now it cannot make out anything at all. The greatest art of
this hunt does not consist in a preliminary preparation of the people,
but in some concluding surprise, which will snatch away votes at the last
minute without giving time to think again. Finally the triumphant moment has
arrived, the votes have been collected and counted, the ‘will of the people’
‘has said its word’, and the representatives of the nation gather in the
Palais Bourbon.
“What happens then? During the elections
they still had to reckon with the voters. But having received the votes and
gathered in the palace, the representatives of the people can completely forget
about it right until the approach of the following elections. During this
period they live exclusively their own party’s life, developing all the
qualities of cliquishness. The deputy, who in theory represents the will of the
voters, has real obligations only in relation to his party…
“As Benjamin
Disraeli said: ‘Damn your principles. Stick to your party…’”[103]
Two
Concepts of Freedom
The contrast between the “nanny state” of the continental philosophes
and enlightened despots, injected with some mystical energy by Rousseau’s
concept of the general will, and the “nightwatchman state” of the English
liberals was linked with the difference between two concepts of freedom.
The
English liberal tradition, which emerged in part as the continuance of, and in
part as a reaction against, the English revolution, defined freedom in a
negative way, as freedom from certain restraints on, and violence to,
the individual. Thus “liberty,” writes Locke, “is to be free from restraint and
violence from others”.[104]
But this freedom from restraint, paradoxically, was to be attained only by
submitting to restraint in the form of law: “Where there is no law,
there is no freedom.”[105]
However, since right laws can be framed only through the use of reason,
man’s freedom “is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him
in that law he is to govern himself by and make him know how far he is left to
the freedom of his own will.”[106]
This tradition, summed up in the three
words: freedom, law and reason, dominated the first half of the
eighteenth-century, and continues to dominate political thinking in the
Anglo-Saxon countries to this day. But from the time of Rousseau and the French
revolution another, positive definition of freedom gained currency – the
freedom to do what you like and be what you want. This concept of freedom
scorned every notion of restraint as foreign to the very idea of liberty; it
emphasised lawlessness (freedom from law) as opposed to law, emotion as
opposed to reason, the people as a single mystical organism having one will as
opposed to the people as individuals having many wills. And
even when it admitted the need for laws, it vehemently rejected the idea of the
superiority of the lawgiver; for, as Demoulins put it, “My motto is that of
every honourable man – no superior”.
The transition between the two concepts of
liberty can be seen in the following passage from Rousseau, which begins with
an “English”, negative, law-abiding definition of liberty, but goes on to a
revolutionary definition which recognizes laws only insofar as they are an
expression of “natural law”, i.e. the general will of the people: “Liberty
consists less in doing one’s will than in not being submitted to the will of
others… There is no liberty without laws, nor where there is someone above the
laws: even in the state of nature man is free only by virtue of the natural law
which commands everyone. A free people obeys, but does not serve; it has
leaders, but not masters; it obeys the laws, but it obeys only the laws, and it
is by dint of the laws that it does not obey men… A people is free, whatever
form its government may have, when in he who governs there is not a man, but an
organ of the law”.[107]
The difference between the concepts of
freedom, freedom from and freedom to, was illuminatingly explored in a famous
essay by Sir Isaiah Berlin. Concerning negative freedom, freedom from,
he wrote: “I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no human being
interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area
within which a man can do what he wants. If I am prevented by other persons
from doing what I want I am to that degree unfree; and if the area within which
I can do what I want is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can
be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not,
however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable
to jump more than 10 feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind, or
cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be eccentric to say that
I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate
interference of other human beings within the area in which I wish to act. You
lack political liberty or freedom only if you are prevented from attaining your
goal by human beings. Mere incapacity to attain your goal is not lack of
political freedom… ‘The nature of things does not madden us, only ill will
does’, said Rousseau. The criterion of oppression is the part that I believe to
be played by other human beings, directly or indirectly, in frustrating my
wishes. By being free in this sense I mean not being interfered with by others.
The wider the area of non-interference the wider my freedom.
“This is certainly what the classical
English political philosophers meant when they used this word.[108]
They disagreed about how wide the area could or should be. They supposed that
it could not, as things were, be unlimited, because if it were, it would entail
a state in which all men could boundlessly interfere with all other men; and
this kind of ‘natural’ freedom would lead to social chaos in which men’s
minimum needs would not be satisfied; or else the liberties of the weak would
be suppressed by the strong. Because they perceived that human purposes and
activities do not automatically harmonize with one another; and, because
(whatever their official doctrines) they put high value on other goals, such as
justice, or happiness, or security, or varying degrees of equality, they were
prepared to curtail freedom in the interests of other values and, indeed, of
freedom itself. For, without this, it was impossible to create the kind of
association that they thought desirable. Consequently, it is assumed by these
thinkers that the area of men’s free action must be limited by law. But equally
it is assumed, especially by such libertarians as Locke and Mill in England,
and Constant and Tocqueville in France, that there ought to exist a certain
minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated, for if
it is overstepped, the individual will find himself in an area too narrow for
even that minimum development of his natural faculties which alone makes it
possible to pursue, and even to conceive, the various ends which men hold good
or right or sacred. It follows that a frontier must be drawn between the area
of private life and that of public authority. Where it is to be drawn is a
matter of argument, indeed of haggling. Men are largely interdependent, and no
man’s activity is so completely private as never to obstruct the lives of
others in any way. ‘Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows’; the liberty
of some must depend on the restraints of others. Still, a practical compromise
has to be found.
“Philosophers with an optimistic view of
human nature, and a belief in the possibility of harmonizing human interests,
such as Locke or Adam Smith and, in some moods, Mill, believed that social harmony
and progress were compatible with reserving a large area for private life over
which neither the state nor any other authority must be allowed to trespass.
Hobbes, and those who agreed with him, especially conservative or reactionary
thinkers, argued that if men were to be prevented from destroying one another,
and making social life a jungle or a wilderness, greater safeguards must be
instituted to keep them in their places, and wished correspondingly to increase
the area of centralized control, and decrease that of the individual. But both
sides agreed that some portion of human existence must remain independent of
the sphere of social control. To invade that preserve, however small, would be
despotism. The most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy, Benjamin
Constant, who had not forgotten the Jacobin dictatorship, declared that at the
very least the liberty of religion, opinion, expression, property, must be
guaranteed against arbitrary invasion. Jefferson, Burke, Paine, Mill, compiled different
catalogues of individual liberties, but the argument for keeping at authority
at bay is always substantially the same. We must preserve a minimum area of
personal freedom if we are not to ‘degrade or deny our nature’. We cannot
remain absolutely free, and must give up some of our liberty to preserve the
rest. But total self-surrender is self-defeating. What then must the minimum
be? That which a man cannot give up without offending against the essence of
his human nature. What is this essence? What are the standards which it
entails? This has been, and perhaps always will be, a matter of infinite
debate. But whatever the principle in terms of which the area of
non-interference is to be drawn, whether it is that of natural law or natural
rights, or of utility or the pronouncements of a categorical imperative, or the
sanctity of the social contract, or any other concept with which men have
sought to clarify and justify their convictions, liberty in this sense means
liberty from; absence of interference beyond the shifting, but always
recognizable, frontier. ‘The only freedom which deserves the name is that of
pursuing our own good in our own way’, said the most celebrated of its
champions. If this is so, is compulsion ever justified? Mill had no doubt that
it was. Since justice demands that all individuals be entitled to a minimum of
freedom, all other individuals were of necessity to be restrained, if need be
by force, from depriving anyone of it. Indeed, the whole function of law was
the prevention of just such collisions: the state was reduced to what Lassalle
contemptuously described as the functions of a nightwatchman or traffic
policeman.”[109]
Berlin goes on to make the important
observation that “liberty in this sense is not incompatible with some kinds of
autocracy, or at any rate with the absence of self-government. Liberty in this
sense is principally concerned with the area of control, not with its source.
Just as a democracy may, in fact, deprive the individual citizen of a great
many liberties which he might have in some other form of society, so it is
perfectly conceivable that a liberal-minded despot would allow his subjects a
large measure of personal freedom. The despot who leaves his subjects a wide
area of liberty may be unjust, or encourage the wildest inequalities, care
little for order, or virtue, or knowledge; but provided that he does not curb
their liberty, or at least curbs it less than many other régimes, he
meets with Mill’s specification.[110]
Freedom in this sense is not, at any rate logically, connected with democracy
or self-government. Self-government may, on the whole, provide a better
guarantee of the preservation of civil liberties than other régimes, and
has been defended as such by libertarians. But there is no necessary connexion
between individual liberty and democratic rule. The answer to the question ‘Who
governs me?’ is logically distinct from the question ‘How far does government
interfere with me?’ It is in this difference that the great contrast between
the two concepts of negative and positive liberty, in the end, consists. For
the ‘positive’ sense of liberty comes to light if we try to answer the
question, not ‘What am I free to do or be?’, but ‘By whom am I ruled?’ or ‘Who
is to say what I am, and what I am not, to be or do?’ The connexion between
democracy and individual liberty is a good deal more tenuous than it seemed to
many advocates of both. The desire to be governed by myself, or at any rate to
participate in the process by which my life is to be controlled, may be as deep
as that of a free area for action, and perhaps historically older. But it is
not a desire for the same thing. So different is it, indeed, as to have led in
the end to the great clash of ideologies that dominates our world. For it is
this – the ‘positive’ conception of liberty: not freedom from, but freedom to –
which the adherents of the ‘negative’ notion represent as being, at times, no
better than a specious disguise for brutal tyranny.”[111]
Berlin now passes to the “positive”
concept of liberty: “The ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from
the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and
decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish
to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s, acts of will. I wish to be
a subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, by conscious purposes which
are my own, not by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to
be somebody, not nobody; a doer – deciding, not being decided for,
self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or by other men as if I
were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role, that
is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them. This is at
least part of what I mean when I say that I am rational, and that it is my
reason that distinguishes me as a human being from the rest of the world. I
wish, above all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active
being, bearing responsibility for his choices and able to explain them by
reference to his own ideas and purposes. I feel free to the degree that I
believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to realize
that it is not.
“The freedom which consists in being one’s
own master, and the freedom which consists in not being prevented from choosing
as I do by other men, may, on the face of it, seem concepts at no great logical
distance from each other – no more than negative and positive ways of saying
the same thing. Yet the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ notions of freedom developed
in divergent directions until, in the end, they came into direct conflict with
each other.
“One way of making this clear is in terms
of the independent momentum which the metaphor of self-mastery acquired. ‘I am
my own master’; ‘I am slave to no man’; but may I not (as, for instance, T.H.
Green is always saying) be a slave to nature? Or to my own ‘unbridled’
passions? Are these not so many species of the identical genus ‘slave’ – some
political or legal, others moral or spiritual? Have not men had the experience
of liberating themselves from spiritual slavery, or slavery to nature, and do
they not in the course of it become aware, on the one hand, of a self which
dominates, and, on the other, of something in them which is brought to heel?
This dominant self is then variously identified with reason, with my ‘higher
nature’, with the self which calculates and aims at what will satisfy it in the
long run, with my ‘real’, or ‘ideal’, or ‘autonomous’ self, or with my self ‘at
its best’; which is then contrasted with irrational impulse, uncontrolled
desires, my ‘lower’ nature, the pursuit of immediate pleasures, my ‘empirical’
or ‘heteronomous’ self, swept by every gust of desire and passion, needing to
be rigidly disciplined if it is ever to rise to the full height of its ‘real’
nature. Presently the two nature may be represented as something wider than the
individual (as the term is normally understood), as a social ‘whole’ of which
the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the
great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn. This entity is
then identified as being the ‘true’ self which, by imposing its collective, or
‘organic’, single will upon its recalcitrant ‘members’, achieves its own, and,
therefore, their, ‘higher’ freedom. The perils of using organic metaphors to
justify the coercion of some men by others in order to raise them to a ‘higher’
level of freedom have often been pointed out. But what gives such plausibility
as it has to this kind of language is that we recognize that it is possible,
and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say,
justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves
pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt. This renders
it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in
their, not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need
better than they know it themselves. What, at most, this entails is that they
would not resist me if they were rational, and as wise as I, and understood
their interests as I do. But I may go on to claim a good deal more than this. I
may declare that they are actually aiming at what in their benighted state they
consciously resist, because there exists within them an occult entity – their
latent rational will, or their ‘true’ purpose – and that this entity, although
it is belied by all that they overtly feel and do and say, is their ‘real’
self, of which the poor empirical self in space and time may know nothing or
little; and that this self in space and time is the only self that deserves to
have its wishes taken into account. Once I take this view, I am in a position to
ignore the actual wishes or men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them
in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge
that whatever is the true goal of man (happiness, fulfilment of duty, wisdom, a
just society, self-fulfilment) must be identical with his freedom – the free
choice of his ‘true’, albeit submerged and inarticulate, self.
“This paradox has often been exposed. It
is one thing to say that I know what is good for X, while he himself does not;
and even to ignore his wishes for its – and his – sake; and a very different
one to say that he has eo ipso chosen it, not indeed consciously, not as
he seems in everyday life, but in his role as a rational self which his
empirical self may not know – the ‘real’ self which discerns the good, and
cannot help choosing it once it is revealed. This monstrous impersonation,
which consists in equating what X would choose if he were something he is not,
or at least is not yet, with what X actually seeks and chooses, is at the heart
of all political theories of self-realization. It is one thing to say that I
may be coerced for my own good which I am too blind to see: and another that if
it is my good, I am not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know
this or not, and am freed even while my poor earthly body and foolish mind
bitterly reject it, and struggle against those who seek to impose it, with the
greatest desperation.
“This magical transformation, or sleight
of hand (for which William James so justly mocked the Hegelians), can no doubt
be perpetrated just as easily with the ‘negative’ concept of freedom, where the
self that should not be interfered with is no longer the individual with his
actual wishes and needs as they are normally conceived, but the ‘real’ man
within, identified with the pursuit of some ideal purpose not dreamed of by his
empirical self. And, as in the case of the ‘positively’ free self, this entity
may be inflated into some super-personal entity – a state, a class, a nation,
or the march of history itself, regarded as a more ‘real’ subject of attributes
than the empirical self. But the ‘positive’ conception of freedom as
self-mastery, with its suggestion of a man divided against himself, lends
itself more easily to this splitting of personality into two: the transcendent,
dominant controller, and the empirical bundle of desires and passions to be
disciplined and brought to heel. This demonstrates (if demonstration of so
obvious a truth is needed) that the conception of freedom directly derives from
the view that is taken of what constitutes a self, a person, a man. Enough
manipulation with the definitions of man, and freedom can be made to mean
whatever the manipulator wishes. Recent history has made it only too clear that
the issue is not merely academic..."[112]
Freemasonry:
(1) The European Element
By the time of the death of Rousseau in
1774 all the essential elements of the antichristian system that was about to
burst upon the world with unparalleled savagery had already appeared in embryonic
form. And by the time the American revolution had triumphed in 1781 it was
clear that the world could be turned upside down. However, the old
despotic order still reigned in Europe; and with rulers such as Frederick the
Great in Prussia and Catherine the Great in Russia turning in practice against
the ideas they embraced in theory it was clear that the “mystery of iniquity”
needed a new stimulus to recover its momentum and propel it towards its goal.
That stimulus came in the form of an element
that was already well known to European history, but which only now began to
acquire a dominant position in European politics, first in the West through the
French revolution of 1789, and then in the East through the Russian revolution
of 1917 - Jewish power.
One major channel of Jewish influence, as
we have seen, was finance. A second was the movement known as Freemasonry,
which because of its close links with Jewry and Judaism is often called
“Judaeo-Masonry”.
Now since belief in the existence of a
Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy against civilisation is often taken as evidence of
madness, it is necessary to assert from the beginning that, as Tikhomirov
rightly says, “it is strange to attribute to the Masons the whole complexity of
the evolution of human societies. One must not have the idea that people lived
happily and in a healthy state, but then the masonic organisation appeared and
corrupted them all. It is necessary to know the laws of the development of
societies, which would be such as they are if the destruction of the temple in
Jerusalem had never taken place. In general the study of Masonry can be
fruitful only on condition that it is conducted scientifically. Only
such a study is capable of clarifying the true level of influence of this or
that secret society on the evolution of peoples and states.”[113]
While Tikhomirov has no doubts about the
existence and importance of the Judaeo-Masonry conspiracy, he nevertheless
insists that the blame for the destruction of modern society lies “most of all
not on some premeditatedly evil influence of the masons or whatever other
organisation, but on the false direction of our own constructive activities.”[114]
And again: “There has never been a man or a society which has not been
corrupted through his own free will.”[115]
In other words, the masons would have no
power over society if society had not laid itself open to attack by voluntarily
abandoning its own defensive principles and institutions. In the context of the
late eighteenth century, these principles and institutions were, especially,
the hierarchical principle, the respect for tradition and the institutions of
the Church and the Monarchy. The masons did not originate the attack on these
principles and institutions – as we have seen, the roots of
anti-authoritarianism in both Church and State go back at least to the
eleventh-century Papacy. What they did was to use an already existing sceptical
and rationalist climate of opinion to intensify and give direction to the
revolutionary movement, “the mystery of iniquity”. The brushwood had already
been gathered; they simply applied the spark which set the fire alight.
Now Masonry has deep, if not easily
traceable, roots both in the pre-Christian East and in the Christian West.
According to one hypothesis put forward by the Masons themselves, Masonry
inherited the occult wisdom of the pre-Christian East via the medieval
crusading order of the Templars, which was destroyed by the French King and the
Pope at the beginning of the fourteenth century on suspicion of terrible
blasphemies. Piers Paul Read writes: “Andrew Ramsay, a Scottish Jacobite exiled
in France who was Chancellor of the French Grand Lodge in the 1730s, claimed
that the first Freemasons had been stonemasons in the crusader states who had
learned the secret rituals and gained the special wisdom of the ancient world.
Ramsay made no specific claim for the Templars, probably because he did not
wish to antagonise his host, the King of France; but in Germany another
Scottish exile, George Frederick Johnson, concocted a myth that transformed
‘the Templars… from their ostensible status of unlearned and fanatical
soldier-monks to that of enlightened and wise knightly seers, who had used
their sojourn in the East to recover its profoundest secrets, and to emancipate
themselves from medieval Catholic credulity’.
“According to the German Freemasons, the
Grand Masters of the Order had learned the secrets and acquired the treasure of
the Jewish Essenes which were handed down from one to the other. James of Molay
[the last Grand Master of the Order], on the night of his execution, had sent
the Count of Beaujew to the crypt of the Temple Church in Paris to recover this
treasure which included the seven-branched candelabra seized by the Emperor
Titus, the crown of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and a shroud. It is undisputed
that in evidence given at the trial of the Templars, a sergeant, John of
Châlons, maintained that Gérard of Villiers, the Preceptor of
France, had been tipped off about his imminent arrest and so had escaped on
eighteen galleys with the Templars’ treasure. If this were so, what happened to
this treasure? George Frederick Johnson said that it had been taken to
Scotland, one of his followers specifying the Isle of Mull.”[116]
Whatever the truth about its origins,
Masonry becomes important in the history of Europe only after the “Glorious
Revolution” of 1688 in England, when, taking advantage of the climate of
greater religious tolerance in the land, gentleman intellectuals gathered in
lodges to discuss politics and religion. A certain heretical occultism is
immediately discernible in these men. Thus the English antiquarian, Elias
Ashmole, who was initiated as a Freemason as early as 1646, and maintained an
active interest in Freemasonry until his death in 1692, also made a good living
as an astrologer.[117]
The secrecy of the masons, and their
secret oaths, naturally aroused suspicions. Thus in 1698 a certain Mr. Winter
circulated a leaflet in London warning “all godly people in the City of London
of the Mischiefs and Evils practised in the Sight of God by those called Freed
Masons… For this devilish Sect of Men are Meeters in secret which swear against
all without their Following. They are the Anti Christ which was to come, leading
Men from fear of God.”[118]
Many have
come to concur with this judgement in the three centuries that have elapsed
since this, the earliest known estimate of Freemasonry, pronounced when it was
still in its infancy…
However, Masonry was saved from
persecution by its success in recruiting members from the aristocracy, who were
lured by the promise of secret knowledge. The Masons immediately published
their names to show how “respectable” they were. Moreover, when the Grand Lodge
of England came to be established in 1717, and the Constitutions of
Masonry were published by Dr. Anderson in 1723, great emphasis was laid on the
Masons’ loyalty to King and country: “A mason is a peaceable subject to the
civil powers, wherever he resides or works, and is never to be concerned in
plots and conspiracies against the peace and welfare of the nation. If a
brother should be a rebel against the state, he is not to be countenanced in
his rebellion, however he may be pitied as an unhappy man; and if convicted of
not other crime, though the brotherhood must and ought to dismiss his
rebellion, and give no umbrage or ground of political jealousy to the
government for the time being; they cannot expel him from the lodge, and his
relation to it remains indefeasible.”[119]
If
English Masonry by and large kept its promise to stay out of politics, this was
certainly not to be the case with its daughter lodges in Europe and America.
Moreover, even while protesting its innocence, the Constitutions gave
clear evidence of Masonry’s revolutionary potential. This is particularly
obvious when in one and the same breath they both disclaim any interest in
religion and then claim to profess “the best [religion] that ever was, or will
or can be… the true primitive, catholic and universal religion agreed to be so
in all times and ages.”[120]
What was this religion? In some
formulations it is like the Deism that was becoming fashionable in England at
the time, in which God is pictured as the “Great Architect of the Universe” Who
creates the laws of nature, sets them working and then plays no further part in
history. At others it is closer to Pantheism. Thus the Constitutions
declare that “it is the law of Nature, which is the law of God, for God is
Nature. It is to love God above all things, and our neighbour as ourself…”[121]
And yet it soon becomes clear it is man,
not God, that it the object of worship of the Masons. This is particularly
clearly expressed in later, continental Masonry. Thus the Convent of the Grand
Orient of France in 1913 declared: “We no longer recognise God as the aim of
life; we have created an ideal which is not God, but humanity.”[122]
Another important feature of the masonic
religion is what we would now call its ecumenism. As religious passions
cooled round Europe, the masons took the lead in preaching religious tolerance.
But they went further in saying that religious differences did not matter, and
that underlying all religions there was a “true, primitive, universal
religion”. In accordance with this principle, Jews were admitted to the masonic
lodges as early as 1724.[123]
The
ecumenism of Masonry was linked to the crisis of faith that was taking place in
the Anglican church in the early eighteenth century, and in particular to the
loss of faith in the unique truth and saving power of Christianity.
Thus “in 1717,” wrote William Palmer, “a
controversy arose on occasion of the writings of Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, in
which he maintained that it was needless to believe in any particular creed, or
to be united to any particular Church; and that sincerity, or our own
persuasion of the correctness of our opinions (whether well or ill founded) is
sufficient. These doctrines were evidently calculated to subvert the necessity
of believing the articles of the Christian faith, and to justify all classes of
schismatics or separatists from the Church. The convocation deemed these
opinions so mischievous, that a committee was appointed to select propositions
from Hoadly’s books, and to procure their censure; but before his trial could
take place, the convocation was prorogued by an arbitrary exercise of the royal
authority…”[124]
Hardly coincidentally, 1717, the year in
which Hoadly’s heretical views were published was the same year in which the
Grand Lodge of England, was founded. And we find a very similar doctrine
enshrined in Dr. Anderson’s Constitutions: “A Mason is obliged, by his
tenure, to obey the moral Law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will
never be a stupid Atheist, nor an irreligious Libertine. But though in ancient
Times Masons were charged in every Country to be of the Religion of that
Country or Nation, whatever it was, yet, ‘tis now thought more expedient only
to oblige them to that Religion in which all men agree, leaving their particular
Opinions to themselves; that is to be good Men and true, or Men of Honour and
Honesty, but whatever Denominations or Persuasions they may be distinguish’d;
whereby Masonry becomes the Centre of Union and the Means of Conciliating true
Friendships among Persons that must have remained at a perpetual Distance.”[125]
A new and extremely deceptive concept was
here introduced into the bloodstream of European thought: “that Religion in
which all men agree”. There is no such thing. Even if we exclude the
“stupid Atheists” and “irreligious Libertines” (of whom there are very many),
we still find men disagreeing radically about the most fundamental doctrines:
whether God is one, or one-in-three, or more than three, whether He is to be
identified with nature or distinguished from it, whether He is evolving or
unchanging, whether or not He became incarnate in Jesus Christ, whether or not
He spoke to Mohammed, whether or not He is coming to judge the world, etc. Upon
the answers to these questions depend our whole concept of right and wrong, of
what it is “to be good Men and true”. Far from there being unanimity among
“religious” people about this, there is bound to be the most radical
disagreement between them.
Ecumenism may be described as religious
egalitarianism, the doctrine that one religion is as good as any other. When
combined, as it was in the lodges of Europe and America, with political and
social egalitarianism, the doctrine that one person is as good as any
other, it made for an explosive mixture – not just a philosophy, but a
programme for revolutionary action. And this revolutionary potential of Masonry
became evident very soon after it spread from England to the Continent…
Now 1717, the year of the foundation of
the Great Lodge of England, was also important as being the date of an
Anglo-French treaty by which the Catholic Stuart pretender to the English
throne was expelled from France and the Protestant Hanoverian dynasty was
recognised by the French government. This facilitated the spread of Freemasonry
to France and the Continent.
There, writes the anti-masonic Catholic
writer Count Leon de Poncins, it “evolved in a distinctly revolutionary and
anti-religious sense. The Grand Orient of France led this movement, followed,
with some reserve, by the Grand Lodge of France, and became the guide of the
Grand Orients of Europe and South America. Freemasonry in the United States,
while maintaining its union and friendly relations with the Grand Lodge of
England, occupies an intermediate position between English Freemasonry and the
Grand Orients of Europe. Some of its branches are nearer the English
conception, and others the European…
“English Freemasonry in 1723 was in no
way Christian; it was rationalist, vaguely deistic and secretly gnostic. The
latter source of inspiration is still active, but it had encountered the
conservative, traditional spirit of England. Most English Freemasons were men
who were scarcely concerned with philosophical or metaphysical preoccupations.
The revolutionary and anti-Christian inspiration which constituted the essence
of contemporary Freemasonry everywhere, encountered a veiled and instinctive
resistance in English Masons. The pact which Freemasonry tacitly concluded with
the Protestant monarchy, to fight against Catholicism [and the Catholic Stuart
pretenders to the English monarchy], which it considered its principal enemy,
contributed to restrain the revolutionary tendencies of English Freemasonry,
whereas they developed freely in Europe and South America, and rather more
timidly in the United States. In short, the revolutionary virus in Freemasonry
is more or less inactive in England, where Freemasonry is more an excuse for
social reunion than an organisation claiming to remake the world.”[126]
This difference between English and
Continental Masonry has been vehemently denied by some writers. And of course,
from a religious point of view, at least until Grand Orient Masonry
officially adopted atheism in 1877 and was “excommunicated” by the Grand Lodge of
England, there was little or no difference between the two, both combining
ecumenism with a syncretistic pagan cult or cults (see below).
Nevertheless, from a political
point of view the distinction is a valid one; for English Masonry, linked as it
was with the nobility and the monarchy from the beginning, dissociated itself
from the revolutionary activities of its brother lodges on the Continent, and
as late as 1929 reaffirmed the ban on discussion of politics and religion
within the lodge.[127]
It was Continental Masonry, springing from the Grand Orient of France, that was
the real revolutionary force in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and
beyond.
The revolutionary political significance
of Continental Masonry is most clearly seen in the 30th degree of
the Scottish rite, the Kadosch degree. Here the myth that forms the core of the
earlier degrees, the murder of Hiram or Adoniram, the supposed architect of
Solomon’s Temple, is replaced by the myth of Jacques de Molay, the last great
master of the order of the Templars, who was burned alive on the orders of King
Philippe the Fair of France and Pope Clement V in 1314, and who was supposed to
have founded four masonic lodges on his deathbed. The initiates of the Kadosch
degree avenge the death of the Templars’ leader by acting out the murder of the
French king and the Pope.
“The Kadosch adept,” writes Ivanov,
“tramples on a crown as a symbol of tyranny in general, and then tramples on
the papal tiara as a symbol of violence over the free human conscience.
“The king and the pope are symbols, and by
these symbols we are given to understand the struggle to the death against
‘civil and ecclesiastical despotism’.”[128]
This vengeful rite was not just theatre,
but a prelude and preparation for real revolutionary action. Thus in 1784 in
Wilhemsbad a pan-European congress of masons in which the mysterious
proto-communist sect of the “Illuminati” took a leading role (see below),
decided on the murder of Louis XVI of France and Gustavus Adolphus III of
France. Both sentences were carried out…
However, the Continental masons managed to
conceal their murderous intentions under a cover of good works and
conviviality. This was enough to fool even those who should have been best
informed. Thus Louis XVI’s queen, Marie Antoinette, wrote to her sister Maria
Christina in 1781: “It seems to me that you attach too much significance to
Masonry in France; it has by no means played the same role in France as in
other countries, thanks to the fact that here everybody belongs to it and so we
know everything that goes on there. What danger do you see in it? I understand
that it would be possible to fear the spread of Masonry if it were a secret
political society, but, you know, this society exists only for good works and
for entertainments; there they do a lot of eating, drinking, discussing and
singing, and the king says that people who drink and sing cannot be
conspirators. Thus it is impossible to call Masonry a society of convinced
atheists, for, as I have heard, they constantly speak about God there. And
besides, they give a lot of alms, educate the children of the poor or dead
members of the brotherhood, give their daughters in marriage – I truly see
nothing in bad in all this. The other day the Princess de Lambal was elected
great mistress of one lodge; she told me how nice they are to her there, but
she said that more was drunk than sung; the other day they offered to give
dowries to two girls. True, it seems to me that it would be possible to do good
without all these ceremonies, but, you know, everyone has his own way of
enjoying himself; as long as they do good, what has the rest to do with us?”[129]
However, one year into the revolution she
had discovered that Masonry had a great deal to do with them. On August 17,
1790 she wrote to her brother, the Austrian Emperor Leopold II: “Forgive me,
dear brother, believe in the tender sentiments of your unhappy sister. The main
thing is, keep away from every masonic society. In this way all the horrors
that are taking place here are striving to attain one and the same end in all
countries.”[130]
The first power in the West clearly to
see the threat of Masonry to both Church and State was the Catholic Church.
Catholicism made no radical distinction between English and French Masonry. In
1738 Masonry of all kinds was condemned by Pope Clement XII in 1738, in 1751 -
by Benedict XIV, in 1821 – by Pius VII, in 1825 – by Leo XII, in 1829 – by Pius
VIII, in 1832 and 1839 – by Gregory XVI, in 1846, 1864, 1865, 1873 and 1876 –
by Pius IX, and in 1884 – by Leo XIII.
The latter’s bull, Humanum Genus
declared of the Freemasons: “Their ultimate has been brought into existence by
Christianity, and to replace it by another in aim is to uproot completely the
whole religious and political order of the world, which harmony with their way
of thinking. This will mean that the foundation and the laws of the new
structure of society will be drawn from pure Naturalism.”[131]
The bull went on: “In the sphere of politics,
the Naturalists lay down that all men have the same rights and that all are
equal and alike in every respect; that everyone is by nature free and
independent; that no one has the right to exercise authority over another; that
it is an act of violence to demand of men obedience to any authority not
emanating from themselves. All power is, therefore, in the free people. Those
who exercise authority do so either by the mandate or the permission of the
people, so that, when the popular will changes, rulers of States may lawfully
be deposed even against their will. The source of all rights and civic duties
is held to reside either in the multitude or in the ruling power in the State,
provided that it has been constituted according to the new principles. They
hold also that the State should not acknowledge God and that, out of the
various forms of religion, there is no reason why one should be preferred to
another. According to them, all should be on the same level.”[132]
Again, in his Encyclical of 19th
March, 1902, Leo XIII wrote: “Freemasonry is the personification of the
Revolution; it constitutes a sort of society in reverse whose aim is to
exercise an occult overlordship upon society as we know it, and whose sole raison
d’être consists in waging war against God and his Church.”[133]
Freemasonry:
(2) The Jewish Element
To what extent is the term “Judaeo-Masonry”
appropriate? The characteristics of Masonry that we have examined so far are
purely western in origin; they amount to a religious expression of
Enlightenment rationalist philosophy. However, when we examine the leadership
of Masonry, and especially its rites and religious practices, a strongly Jewish
element is immediately apparent; for most of the basic religious doctrines
and rites of Freemasonry are in fact Jewish. Moreover, there is a
significant personal input of Jewry into Masonry.
“It is true, of course,” writes Bernard
Lazare, the Jewish authority on anti-semitism, “that there were Jews connected
with Freemasonry from its birth, students of the Kabbala, as is shown by
certain rites which survive. It is very probable, too, that in the years
preceding the outbreak of the French Revolution, they entered in greater
numbers than ever into the councils of the secret societies, becoming indeed
themselves the founders of secret associations. There were Jews in the circle
around Weishaupt, and a Jew of Portugese origin, Martinez de Pasquales,
established numerous groups of illuminati in France and gathered around him a
large number of disciples whom he instructed in the doctrines of
re-integration. The lodges which Martinez founded were mystic in character,
whereas the other orders of Freemasonry were, on the whole, rationalistic in
their teachings…. There would be little difficulty in showing how these two
tendencies worked in harmony; how Cazotte, Cagliostro, Martinez, Saint-Martin,
the Comte de Saint Germain and Eckartshausen were practically in alliance with
the Encyclopaedists and Jacobins, and how both, in spite of their seeming
hostility, succeeded in arriving at the same end, the undermining, namely, of
Christianity.
“This, too, then, would tend to show that
though the Jews might very well have been active participants in the agitation
carried on by the secret societies, it was not because they were the founders
of such associations, but merely because the doctrines of the secret societies
agreed so well with their own.”[134]
Thus Freemasonry was not controlled by the
Jews, according to Lazare, but they had a great deal in common:
Anti-Christianity (French Grand Orient Masonry to a much greater extent than
English “regular” Masonry), a taste for a cabbalistic type of mysticism,
revolutionary politics and many members of Jewish blood. But this is only the
beginning. It is when one enters into the details of the rites, especially the
rites of the higher degrees, that the resemblances become really striking.
“The connections are more intimate,”
writes a Parisian Jewish review, “than one would imagine. Judaism should
maintain a lively and profound sympathy for Freemasonry in general, and no
matter concerning this powerful institution should be a question of
indifference to it…
“The spirit of Freemasonry is that of
Judaism in its most fundamental beliefs; its ideas are Judaic, its language is
Judaic, its very organisation, almost, is Judaic. Whenever I approach the
sanctuary where the Masonic order accomplishes its works, I hear the name of
Solomon ringing everywhere, and echoes of Israel. Those symbolic columns are
the columns of the Temple where each Hiram’s workmen received their wages; they
enshrine his revered name. The whole Masonic tradition takes me back to that
great epoch when the Jewish monarch, fulfilling David’s promises, raised up to
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a religious monument worthy of the creator
of Heaven and earth – a tradition symbolised by powerful images which have
spread outside the limits of Palestine to the whole world, but which still bear
the indelible imprint of their origin.
“That Temple which must be built, since
the sanctuary in Jerusalem has perished, the secret edifice at which all Masons
on earth labour with one mind, with a word of command and secret
rallying-points – it is the moral sanctuary, the divine asylum wherein all men
who have been reconciled will re-unite one day in holy and fraternal Agapes; it
is the social order which shall no longer know fratricidal wars, nor castes,
nor pariahs, and where the human race will recognise and proclaim anew its
original oneness. That is the work on which every initiate pledges his devotion
and undertakes to lay his stone, a sublime work which has been carried on for
centuries.”[135]
This talk of universal fraternity in the
rebuilding of the Temple is deception. “As for the final result of the
messianic revolution,” writes Batault, “it will always be the same: God will
overthrow the nations and the kings and will cause Israel and her king to
triumph; the nations will be converted to Judaism and will obey the Law or else
they will be destroyed and the Jews will be the masters of the world. The Jews’
international dream is to unite the world with the Jewish law, under the
direction and domination of the priestly people – a general form.. of
imperialism…”[136]
However, it remains true that the main aim
of Freemasonry, as of Judaism, is to rebuild the Temple of Solomon. And this
alone should be enough to warn us of its Antichristianity, insofar the Lord
decreed that “not one stone [of it] shall be left upon another that shall not
be thrown down” (Matthew 24.2), and every attempt to rebuild it has been
destroyed by the Lord, as in the time of Julian the Apostate. Moreover, the
rites of Freemasonry themselves declare that the secret aim of the rebuilding
of the Temple is to undo the work of Christ on the Cross.
Thus the 18th or Rosicrucian
Degree[137] speaks of
the ninth hour of the day as “the hour when the Veil of the Temple was rent in
twain and darkness overspread the earth, when the true Light departed from us,
the Altar was thrown down, the Blazing Star was eclipsed, the Cubic Stone
poured forth Blood and Water, the Word was lost, and despair and tribulation
sat heavily upon us. It goes on to exhort the Masons: “Since Masonry has
experienced such dire calamities it is our duty, Princes, by renewed labours,
to retrieve our loss.”
The Reverend Walter Hannah, an Anglican
clergyman, has justly commented on this: “For any Christian to declare that
Masonry experienced ‘a dire calamity’ at the Crucifixion, or that Masons
suffered a ‘loss’ at the triumphant death of our Saviour on the Cross which the
Excellent and Perfect Princes of the Rose Croix of Heredom can by their own
labour ‘retrieve’ seems not only heretical but actually blasphemous. The only
interpretation which makes sense of this passage would appear to be that it is
not the death of our Lord which is mourned, but the defeat of Satan.”[138]
Indeed, for “the eclipse of the Blazing
Star” can only mean the defeat of Satan, while the Cubic Stone pouring forth
Blood and Water can only mean the triumph of Christ on the Cross - Christ, Who
is “the Stone that the builders rejected” which became “the chief Corner-Stone”
of the New Testament Church (Matthew 21.42), having been rejected as
“the wrong shape” by the leaders of Old Israel. As the Apostle Peter said to
the Sanhedrin: “This [Christ] is the Stone which was rejected by you builders
[Jews, Masons], which has become the chief Corner-Stone” (Acts 4.11).
Any Temple which does not have Christ as the chief Corner-Stone is an abomination
to God and will be destroyed by Him just as the Old Testament Temple was
destroyed; for “whoever falls on this Stone will be broken; but on whomever it
falls, it will grind him to power” (Matthew 21.44).
It is in the same Rosicrucian Degree that
initiates are told to walk over the Cross of Christ[139],
an action which raises the suspicion that Freemasonry in its more advanced
degrees is in fact nothing other than a form of Satanism.
Certainly, there are many pagan and
theosophical elements in Masonic rituals, as is clear from the Entered
Apprentice’s Handbook[140],
and from the name of the Masonic god, Jah-Bul-On – that is,
Jehovah-Baal-Osiris.[141]
And yet as we ascend higher through the elaborate web of deception that Masonry
places in the way of those who would penetrate its secrets, we see that the
higher Masons, as opposed to their junior brethren on the lower levels of
“enlightenment”, do not really believe even in any of the pagan gods. They
worship Satan, yes; but they also believe in Christ; in fact, their belief is a
kind of Manicheism, a belief in two gods, one of whom, Christ, they hate
with a truly satanic hatred, and the other, Satan, whom they worship with
unbounded devotion. Templarism was also a kind of Manichaeism…
The first element, the hatred of Christ,
was clearly expressed at the 1902 Convent of the Grand Orient by the Grand
Master, Brother Delpech, who said: “The triumph of the Galilean has lasted
twenty centuries. In his turn he is dying. That mysterious voice, which once cried:
‘Great Pan is dead!’ from the mountains of Epirus, is today proclaiming the end
of that deceiving God who had promised an age of peace and justice to those who
would believe in him. The illusion has lasted long enough; but the lying God is
disappearing in his turn; he is going to take his place, amidst the dust of the
ages, with those other divinities of India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, who saw so
many deluded creatures prostrate themselves before their altars. Freemasons, we
realise, not without joy, that we ourselves are no strangers to this downfall
of false prophets. The Church of Rome, based on the Galilean myth, began to
decline rapidly from the very day on which the Masonic association was
established. From a political point of view, Freemasons have often differed
among themselves. But at all times Freemasonry has stood firm on this principle
– to wage war against all superstitions and against all forms of fanaticism.”[142]
The second element, the worship of Satan,
can be seen in the following statement by the famous American Mason, Albert
Pike: “To the crowd we must say: we worship a God, but it is the God one adores
without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this,
that you may repeat it to the brethren of the 32nd, 31st
and 30th degrees: all of us initiates of the high degrees should
maintain the Masonic religion in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine. If
Lucifer were not God, would Adonai, the God of the Christians, whose deeds
prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man, his barbarism and repulsion for
science, would Adonai and his priests calumniate him? Yes, Lucifer is God, and
unfortunately Adonai is also God… religious philosophy in its purity and youth
consists in the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonai.”[143]
And so Masonry is revealed as a web of
deceit whose outer layers are liberalism, scientism, and rationalism; whose
inner layers are the overthrow of the existing world order in both Church and
State; and whose innermost sanctum is the worship of Satan. In this it
perfectly matches, both in content and form, the Jewish revolution. And yet,
while not closing our eyes to this evil, we must not forget Tikhomirov’s wise
word, that the blame for the destruction of modern society lies “most of all
not on some premeditatedly evil influence of the masons or whatever other
organisation, but on the false direction of our own constructive activities,”[144]
and that “there has never been a man or a society which has not been corrupted through
his own free will.”[145]
The
American Revolution
The first major historical event in which
the hand of Masonry is clearly discernible is the American revolution. The
first lodges had been established in Boston and Philadelphia by 1730[146],
and several of the leaders of the American revolution were Freemasons,
including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Hancock, James Madison,
James Monrose, Paul Revere, John Paul Jones and La Fayette.[147]
However, many of the leaders of the British forces were also Freemasons, and
“of the 7 Provincial Grand Masters [of American Masonry], 5 supported George
III, and condemned revolutionary agitation against the established authority.”[148]
This confirms the point made above, namely that English, as opposed to
Continental Masonry, was not revolutionary in character; while American
Masonry, being a mixture of the two (La Fayette represented French Masonry, and
Franklin was also influenced by the French), had leading representatives on
both sides of the conflict. But it was not simply a question of English versus
Continental Masonry: the movement in general had the unexpected property of
spawning, as well as most of the leaders of the revolution, several of the
leaders of the counter-revolution.
Hence the paradox that Tom Paine, one of
the leading apologists of the revolution, was not a Freemason, while his
reactionary opponent, Edmund Burke, was; that the anti-revolutionary Comte
d’Artois and King Gustavus Adolphus III of Sweden were Freemasons, while the
ultra-revolutionary Danton and Robespierre were not; that Napoleon, the leader
of the French revolution after the fall of the Directory, was not a Freemason,
while the reactionary generals who brought about his downfall – Wellington,
Blücher and Kutuzov – all were.
It is worth pausing to consider the causes
of this paradoxical, but important phenomenon. One reason is undoubtedly the
philosophical distinction we have already discussed between freedom as a
negative concept, freedom from, and freedom as a positive concept,
freedom to. Those who joined the ranks of the Masons were lovers of
freedom in a general sense; but when some of them saw how the Rousseauist,
positive concept of freedom led to Jacobinism and all the horrors of the French
revolution, they turned sharply against it. Some still remained members of the
lodge, but others broke all links with it. Thus Wellington never entered a
lodge after his membership lapsed in 1795 and in 1851 wrote that he “had no
recollection of having been admitted a Freemason…”[149]
Another reason has to do with the
decentralised, diffuse organisation of Masonry, and its very broad criteria of
membership. This means that a very wide range of people can enter its ranks,
and precludes the degree of control and discipline that is essential for the
attainment and, still more important, the retention of supreme political power.
Masonry is therefore the ideal kind of organisation for the first stage
in the revolutionary process, the dissemination of revolutionary ideas as
quickly as possible through as large a proportion of the population as
possible.
But if “the mystery of iniquity” is to
achieve real political power, this first stage has to be succeeded by a second
in which a more highly disciplined and ruthless, Communist-style party
takes-over the leadership.
As we shall see, such a take-over is
discernible in both the French and the Russian revolutions. In France the
masonic constitutionalists, such as Mirabeau and Lafayette, were pushed aside
by the anti-democratic, anti-constitutionalist Jacobins or “Illuminati”, while
in Russia the masonic constitutionalists, such as Kerensky and Lvov, were
pushed aside by Lenin and Stalin…The American revolution was unique in that the
first stage has not been succeeded by the second – yet.
This is partly because it was not that revolutionary.
As Barzun writes: “No new Idea entailing a shift in forms of power – the mark
of revolutions – was proclaimed. The 28 offences that King George was accused
of had long been familiar in England. The language of the Declaration is that
of protest against abuses of power, not of proposals for recasting the
government on new principles.”[150]
Now just as
Hume took the principles of Lockean liberalism, made them self-consistent and
thereby showed their absurdity, so the American revolutionaries took the
principles of the English “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, applied them more
generally and in a Rousseauist spirit, and thereby showed that English
liberalism was dangerously open-ended, tending to its own destruction.
In the American, as in all revolutions,
idealistic motives were mixed with down-to-earth greed.[151]
Its idealism, however, had, as Norman Davies writes, “important repercussions
in Europe. For one thing, it pushed France’s financial crisis towards the brink.
It also made Frenchmen, and others, consider their own predicament: if poor old
bumbling George III was to be classed as a tyrant, how should one classify the
other monarchs of Europe? If the Americans could rebel against a 3d.
duty on tea, what possible justification could there be for the massive imposts
under which most Europeans groaned? If the USA had to be created because
Americans had no representation in the British Parliament, what should all
those Europeans think whose countries did not even possess a parliament?”[152]
But there were
serious implications for parliamentarism, too. If parliament placed limits on
the king in the name of the people and natural law, there was no reason why
limits should not also be placed on parliament in turn by other estates of the
realm, even colonials – and in the name of the same people and natural law.
Thus the American revolution showed, as one American historian has put it, that
“parliamentary supremacy”, no less than monarchy, “was vulnerable to riot, agitation
and boycott…”[153]
Moreover, the
process of rebellion could go on forever; for there were always people who did
not feel that they belonged to this people, and therefore felt the right
to rebel against it. Thus, apart from those loyalists who were killed in the
War of Independence, 80,000 emigrated – “and that still left a considerable
proportion of the population out of sympathy with the state of affairs in 1783.
The unassimilated communities of Germans, Swiss, Dutch and Finns, and the
religious settlements of Quakers, Shakers, Dunkers, Mennonites,
Schwenkenfelders and others carried on as before – oblivious to government and
resistant to national inclusion. The settlers of what later became Kentucky and
Tennessee debated the possibility of switching to Spanish sovereignty. In 1784
the western counties of North Carolina attempted to go their own way. Three
years later the Wyoming Valley tried to secede from Pennsylvania. There was
opposition, rioting and even revolt against the Congress, just as there had
been against Westminster. One reason was that the tax burden had increased
dramatically. In the last years of British rule, the colonies enjoyed lower
taxation than any people in the Western world except for the Poles. By the late
1780s the Massachusetts per capita tax burden of one shilling had gone up to
eighteen shillings; the rise in Virginia was from five pence to ten shillings.
And it is worth remembering that tax was what had sparked off the revolution in
the first place…”[154]
However, all this was not foreseen when
Thomas Jefferson presented a doctrine of “self-evident” natural rights known as
the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress: “We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the
consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish
it...”
When he was ambassador in Paris, Jefferson
was asked why he had substituted “happiness” for the traditional Lockean emphasis
on “property”. He replied that since the secure possession of property was an
important condition of happiness, there was no real contradiction. However,
this was the first time in history that “the pursuit of Happiness” had been
taken to be one of the purposes of the State, and the failure to achieve this
end as a justification for revolution.
“This was not, of course,” writes
McClelland, “to say that it was government’s business to regulate the details
of people’s lives to make sure that they were cheerful, but it did mean that a
very exact sense emerged of government’s duty to provide those conditions in
which rational men could pursue happiness, that is further their own interests,
without being hindered unnecessarily either by government or by their fellow
men. This was more radical than it sounds, because in eighteenth-century
political thought it meant that government’s capacity to promote the happiness
of its subjects, however negatively, was connected with the vital question of
the legitimacy of government. No political theory ever invented, and no actual
government since the Flood, had ever had as its proclaimed intention the idea
of making men miserable. All governments more or less claim that they have
their subjects’ happiness at heart, but most governments have not based their
claims to be entitled to rule directly on their happiness-creating function.
The reason why governments do not typically base their claim to rule on their
capacity to increase happiness is obvious enough, because to do so would be to
invite their subjects to judge whether their governments are competent or not.
Indeed, it could be argued that most of the justifications for forms of rule
which have been on offer since Plato are all careful to distinguish between
questions about legitimacy and questions about happiness…”[155]
“The Declaration, approved by congress on
4 July 1776 and signed by its members on 2 August, was greeted with incredulity
by the British. The British Gentleman’s Magazine ridiculed the idea of
equality: ‘We hold, they say, these truths to be self-evident: That all men are
created equal. In what are they created equal? Is it in size, strength,
understanding, figure, civil or moral accomplishments, or situation of life?”[156]
The British had a point. But, having been
the leaders in political and philosophical thought, they were now behind the
times. Rousseau had preached the general will and the nobility of the common
man, and it was now the Americans with their “We, the People” Declaration who
were in tune with the latest political ideas. In any case, was it not a British
philosopher, John Locke, who had spoken of an original state of human equality,
and had even looked across the Atlantic to the primitive societies there for
its incarnation, saying: “In the beginning all the world was America”? And were
not the Americans simply applying the same principle in opposing parliament as
the English had in opposing the king nearly a century before?[157]
However, while Locke had invoked the sovereign power of the people in order to
place limits on the king, he never dreamed that any but those qualified to be
Members of Parliament, i.e. the landowning gentry, should qualify as “the
people” and do the limiting. But the Americans claimed that “the people” included
even unrepresented colonials, and that “the will of the people” had a wider
meaning than “the will of parliament”. The uncomfortable fact for the British
was that, however little basis the doctrine of equality had in empirical fact,
it was in the air of public debate, while the Americans’ feeling that they
should be treated equally, that is, on equal terms with Britons of similar
wealth and breeding, was a very powerful force that brooked no resistance.
But the demand for equality could only go
so far without undermining the basis of American society, too. Thus in April,
1776 Benjamin Franklin admitted “that our struggle has loosened the bonds of
government everywhere; that children and apprentices were disobedient; that
schools and colleges were grown turbulent; that Indians slighted their
guardians, and negroes grew more insolent to their masters…”[158]
And several of the authors of the Declaration of Independence who spoke so
eloquently about the equality of all, such as Thomas Jefferson and George
Washington, were themselves slave-owners…
In 1778 France entered the war on the
American side – hardly a wise move for a state that was more absolutist than
Britain and therefore still more vulnerable to the propaganda of revolution.
Indeed, “French assistance to the rebel Americans helped to bankrupt the royal
regime in France and create the conditions for revolution in 1789.”[159]
But the assistance given to the Americans by the French was decisive in turning
the tide of war: on October 19, 1781 the British marched out of Yorktown to
surrender to the Americans with their bands playing the old song, “The World
Turned Upside Down”.
In 1787 delegates from the Thirteen States
assembled at Philadelphia to draft a new Constitution. Their major motivation
was fear of despotism and distrust of big government; they wanted to create a
government which would interfere as little as possible in the private lives of
the citizens. For, as James Madison put it: “Wherever the real power in
government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our government the real
power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights
is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of government contrary to the sense
of its constituents, but from acts in which the government is the mere
instrument of the major number of the constituents. This is a truth of great
importance, but not yet sufficiently attended to…”[160]
The Constitution included elements that
were familiar from the European liberal philosophers, such as the separation of
powers of the executive (the President), the legislature (the two houses of
Congress) and the judiciary (the Supreme Court). However, the American Founding
Fathers went a significant step further in granting individual citizens the
right to bear arms in defence of their rights. Such a revolutionary innovation
was perhaps possible only in America, whose distance from its most powerful
rivals, the decentralised system of semi-sovereign states and ever-expanding
frontiers made strong central government less essential and gave unparalleled
freedom to the individualist farmer-settlers.
There is a rich irony in the fact that the
State which in the twentieth century became the main bulwark of ordered
government against the communist revolution should have been the most
revolutionary State of the era prior to 1789. Thus in 1787 Jefferson wrote to
the future President, James Madison: “I hold it, a little rebellion now and
then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the
physical… It is a medicine for the sound health of government.”
Indeed, what can be more revolutionary,
more undermining of legitimate political authority than the statement made by
Abraham Lincoln in 1861: “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the
people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing
government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or
their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it…”[161]
Or, as he said two years later at the Gettysburg address: “government of the
people, by the people, for the people”…
Burke pointed to a deeper root of the
revolution than its masonic-rationalist ideology - the indomitably Protestant
temper of the Americans: “The people are Protestants, and of the kind which is
the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. All
Protestantism is a sort of dissent. But the religion in our northern colonies
is a refinement on the principle of resistance. It is the dissidence of dissent
and the protestantism of the Protestant religion.”[162]
But there were two kinds of American
Protestantism: the Deist Protestantism of the cultured leaders of the
Revolution, who, as Karen Armstrong writes, “experienced the revolution as a
secular event”[163],
and the Protestantism of Calvinist lower classes, who, as a result of that
emotional outpouring of ecstatic religion known as the First Great Awakening,
“were ready to ascribe apocalyptic significance to current events”.[164]
“The Founding Fathers of the American
republic were an aristocratic elite and their ideas were not typical. The vast
majority of Americans were Calvinists, and they could not relate to this
rationalist ethos. Initially, most of the colonists were just as reluctant to
break with England as their leaders were. Not all joined the revolutionary
struggle. Some 30,000 fought on the British side, and after the war between
80,000 and 100,000 left the new states and migrated to Canada, the West Indies,
or Britain. Those who elected to fight for independence would be as much
motivated by the old myths and millenial dreams of Christianity as by the
secularist ideals of the Founders…
“During the first decade of the
revolutionary struggle, people were loath to make a radical break with the
past. Severing relations with Britain seemed unthinkable, and many still hoped
that the British government would change its policies. Nobody was straining
forward excitedly to the future or dreaming of a new world order. Most
Americans still instinctively responded to the crisis in the old, premodern
way: they looked back to an idealized past to sustain them in their position.
The revolutionary leaders and those who embraced the more secular Radical Whig
ideology drew inspiration from the struggle of the Saxons against the invading
Normans in 1066, or the more recent struggle of the Puritan Parliamentarians
during the English Civil War. The Calvinists harked back to their own Golden
Age in New England, recalling the struggle of the Puritans against the
tyrannical Anglican establishment in Old England; they had sought liberty and
freedom from oppression in the New World, creating a godly society in the
American wilderness. The emphasis in the sermons and revolutionary rhetoric of
this period (1763-73) was on the desire to conserve the precious achievements
of the past. The notion of radical change inspired fears of decline and ruin.
The colonists were seeking to preserve their heritage, according to the old
conservative spirit. The past was presented as idyllic, the future as
potentially horrific. The revolutionary leaders declared that their actions
were designed to keep at bay the catastrophe that would inevitably ensue if
there was a radical severance from tradition. They spoke of the possible
consequences of British policy with fear, using the apocalyptic language of the
Bible.
“But this changed. As the British clung
obstinately to their controversial imperial policies, the colonists burned
their boats. After the Boston Tea Party (1773) and the Battles of Lexington and
Concord (1775) there could be no going back. The Declaration of Independence
expressed a new and courageous determination to break away from the old order
and go forward to an unprecedented future. In this respect, the Declaration was
a modernizing document, which articulated in political terms the intellectual
independence and iconoclasm that had characterized the scientific revolution in
Europe. But the majority of the colonists were more inspired by the mytbs [sic]
of Christian prophecy than by John Locke…
“… The Great Awakening had already made
New Light Calvinists wary of the establishment and confident of their ability
to effect major change. When revolutionary leaders spoke of ‘liberty’, they
used a term that was already saturated with religious meaning: it carried
associations of grace, of the freedom of the Gospel and the Sons of God. It was
linked with such themes as the Kingdom of God, in which all oppression would
end, and the myth [sic] of the Chosen People wh would become God’s
instrument in the transformation of the world. Timothy Dwight (1752-1817),
president of Yale University, spoke enthusiastically of the revolution ushering
in ‘Immanuel’s Land’, and of America becoming ‘the principal seat of that new,
that peculiar Kingdom which shall be given to the saints of the Most High’. In
1775, the Connecticut preacher Ebenezer Baldwin insisted that the calamities of
the war could only hasten God’s plans for the New World. Jesus would establish
his glorious Kingdom in America: liberty, religion and learning had been driven
out of Europe and had moved westward, across the Atlantic. The present crisis
was prearing the way for the Last Days of the present corrupt order. For Provost
William Smit of Philadephia, the colonies were God’s ‘chosen seat of Freedom,
Arts and Heavenly Knowledge’.
“But if churchmen were sacralizing politics, secularist leaders also used the language of Christian utopianism. John Adams looked back on the settlement of America as God’s plan for the enlightenment of the whole of humanity. Thomas Paine was convinced that ‘we have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation such as the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand’. The rational pragmatism of the leaders would not itself have been sufficient to help people make the fearsome journey to an unknown future and break with the motherland. The enthusiasm, imagery, and mythology of Christian eschatology gave meaning to the revolutionary struggle and helped secularism and Calvinists alike to make the decisive, dislocating severance from tradition.”[165]
“Thus,” continues Armstrong, “religion
played a key role in the creation of the first modern secular republic. After
the Revolution, however, when the newly independent states drew up their
constitutions, God was mentioned in them only in the most perfunctory manner.
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson disestablished the Anglican church in Virginia; his
bill declared that coercion in matters faith was ‘sinfull and tyrannical’, that
truth would prevail if people were allowed their own opinions, and that there
should be a ‘wall of separation’ between religion and politics. The bill was
supported by the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians of Virginia, who
resented the privileged position of the Church of England in the state. Later
the other states followed Virginia’s lead, and disestablished their own
churches, Massachusetts being the last one to do so, in 1833. In 1787, when the
federal Constitution was drafted at the Philadelphia Convention, God was not
mentioned at all, and in the Bill of Rights (1789), the First Amendment of the
Constitution formally separated religion from the state: ‘Congress shall make
no laws respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof’. Henceforth faith would be a private and voluntary affair in
the united States. This was a revolutionary step and has been hailed as one of
the great achievements of the Age of Reason. The thinking behind it was indeed
inspired by the tolerant philosophy of the Enlightenment, but the Founding
Fathers were also moved by more pragmatic considerations. They knew that the
federal Constitution was essential to preserve the unity of the states, but
they also realized that if the federal government established any single one of
the Protestant denominations and made it the official faith of the United States,
the Constitution would not be approved. Congregationalist Massachusetts, for
example, would never ratify a Constitution that established the Anglican
Church. This was also the reason why Article VI, Section 3, of the Constitution
abolished religious tests for office in the federal government. There was idealism
in the Founders’ decision to disestablish religion and to secularize politics,
but the new nation could not base its identity on any one sectarian option and
retain the loyalty of all its subjects. The needs of the modern state demanded
that it be tolerant and, therefore, secular.”[166]
Already in Europe the notion of toleration
had undergone a subtle but important change, the change from toleration as “a
utilitarian expedient to avoid destructive strife” to toleration as “an
intrinsic value”.[167]
It became a dogma of the Enlightenment and Masonry that a ruler could not
impose his religion on his subjects.[168]
In fact, certain rulers, such as Frederick the Great, A Mason himself, had
taken religious toleration to the point of almost complete indifference.
However, the complete separation of Church and State, religion and
politics, was still unheard-of in Europe. This idea was first put into practice
in the United States, a land founded mainly by Calvinist refugees fleeing from
the State’s persecution of their religion. It marks the furthest application of
the principle of negative liberty, freedom from. For what the Calvinist
refugees valued above all was the freedom to practice their religion free from
any interference from the State.
K.N. Leontiev writes: “The people who left
Old England and laid the foundations of the States of America were all
extremely religious people who did not want to make any concessions with regard
to their burning personal faith and had not submitted to the State Church of
Episcopal Anglicanism, not out of progressive indifference, but out of
godliness.
“The Catholics, Puritans, Quakers, all
were agreed about one thing – that there should be mutual tolerance, not out of
coldness, but out of necessity. And so the State created by them for the
reconciliation of all these burning religious extremes found its centre of
gravity outside religion. Tolerance was imposed by circumstances, there was no
inner indifferentism.”[169]
The
new doctrine, as we have seen, was enshrined in the Constitution’s First
Amendment (1791): “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”[170]
The religious toleration of the United
States has undoubtedly been a precious boon for the immigrants from many
countries and of many faiths who have fled there to escape persecution. The
assumption underlying it was well expressed by a law report in 1917: “If… the
attitude of the law both civil and criminal towards all religions depends
fundamentally on the safety of the State and not on the doctrines or
metaphysics of those who profess them, it is not necessary to consider whether
or why any given body was relieved by the law at one time or frowned on at
another, or to analyse creeds and tenets, Christian and other.”[171]
However, the idea that the safety of the
State is completely independent of the religion (or lack of it) confessed by
its citizens is false. For, as Solomon says: “Righteousness exalts a nation,
but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14,34). The history of
the people of Israel, and of several New Testament nations, demonstrates that
their prosperity depended crucially on their fulfilling of the commandments of
God. The idea that the religion of a State has no bearing on its prosperity
could occur only to a person who has not studied history (or any human science)
or believes in a Deist conception of God as a Being Who created the world but
does not interfere in its history thereafter. Especially important for the
prosperity of a nation is the religion, and hence the morality, of its rulers.
Also false is
the idea that anyone worshipping “according to the dictates of his own
conscience” is for that reason alone worthy of protection. “Conscience” very
often refers, not to the real voice of God speaking in the soul of man, but any
voice, however demonic, that a man thinks is the voice of God. It is
therefore inherently dangerous to consider a religion worthy of protection, not
because it is objectively true, but because the believers are sincere in their
beliefs, whether these are in fact true or false, profitable to society or
profoundly harmful to it.
Again, there is
no foundation in Holy Scripture or Tradition for such a teaching. False
religion is always harmful, both for its adherents, and for those
right-believers who are tempted away from the right path by them. We would
never accept the argument that a poison can be sold freely so long as its
traders sincerely believe it to be harmless or because the traders “are
accountable to God alone” for the harm they cause. And the spiritual poison of
heresy is far more harmful than material poison, in that it leads, not simply
to the temporal dissolution of the body, but to the eternal damnation of the
soul.
Of course, it
is another question how a false religion is to be combatted. Crude forms
of persecution are often counter-productive in that they strengthen the
fanaticism of the persecuted and elicit the sympathy of others. Persuasion and education that respects the freewill of
the heretic is without question the best means of combatting false belief. The
free will of the heretic is not violated, and he is able to come freely, by the
free exercise of his reasoning power, to a knowledge of the truth.[172]
However, what
about those who are too young to reason for themselves or for some other reason
unable to exercise their reasoning powers? Should they not be protected from
the influence of heretics? If allowed to live in a truly Christian atmosphere,
these weak members of society may become stronger in faith and have less need of the protection of the State. But while
they are still weak, the influence of heretics, if unchecked, could well lead
them astray. It is a generally accepted principle that the young and the weak,
who are not yet fully independent spiritually, are entitled to the protection
of the State against those who would exploit their weakness to their
destruction. So in cases where the heretic is himself stubbornly inpenitent,
and is leading others astray, physical forms of oppression may be justified. The spiritually strong may refuse to offer
physical resistance to religious evil, choosing instead the path of voluntary
martyrdom. But the spiritually weak cannot choose this path, and must be
protected from the evil, if necessary by physical means.
Indeed, one could argue that the
government that does not protect the weak in this way is itself persecuting
them, laying them open to the most evil and destructive influences. For, as Sir
Thomas More’s King Utopus understood, “the worst men be most obstinate and
stubborn and in their evil opinion most constant”, so that without some
restraint on them “the best and holiest religion would be trodden underfoot by
most vain superstitions, even as good corn is by thorns and weeds overgrown and
choked.”[173]
For, as Edmund Burke said, “nothing more
is required for the complete triumph of evil than that good men should do
nothing…”
Lev Tikhomirov writes: “Man is a bodily
being. Moral ‘persuasion’ is inseparable from moral ‘coercion’, and in certain
cases also from physical ‘violence’. If one says: ‘Act through moral
persuasion, but do not dare to resort to physical violence’, this is either
absurdity or hypocrisy. Every conviction sooner or later unfailingly finds its
expression in forms of physical action for the simple reason that man is not
[only] spirit and lives in a physical form. All our acts represent a union of
spiritual and physical acts. If a man does something, it is unfailingly
accompanied by physical actions. This relates both to good and to evil. One can
oppose evil sometimes by moral persuasions, but at other times it is impossible
to resist it otherwise than physically, and then ‘resistance’ and ‘violence’
are morally obligatory.”[174]
In the Lives of the Saints we even
find cases in which saints who are not secular rulers have executed heretics or
magicians. Thus the Apostles Peter and Paul by their prayers brought about the
death of Simon Magus; St. Basil the Great prayed for, and obtained, the death
of Julian the Apostate; and the holy hierarchs Patrick of Ireland and Leo of
Catania in effect executed particularly stubborn perverters of the people. Of
course, these were very exceptional cases; and in Sulpicius Severus’ Life
of St. Martin of Tours we find the saint refusing to have communion with a
synod of bishops that had executed some Spanish heretics. However, if even
non-ruler saints have killed heretics in exceptional cases, how much greater
justification do Christian rulers have, who “bear not the sword in vain”, in
that they are “God’s ministers, avengers to execute wrath on him who practices
evil” (Romans 13.4)?
Biblical rulers
such as Kings David, Solomon and Josiah were required by God to defend
and nourish the faith of the people as their first duty. The prophets
constantly called them to this, and reminded them that they would be approved
or condemned by God primarily in accordance with their fulfilment or
non-fulfilment of this duty. It follows that the idea that “religion is not in
the purview of human government” and that a connection between them is
injurious to both” is false.
Moreover, in
the long term the State needs religion even more than religion needs the State.
For law and order depend on morality, which depends on religion. Tikhomirov
writes: “The legislative mind cannot fail to value the religious spirit of a
people in view of the unbreakable bond between religion and morality…
“State order
and the energetic pursuit of the aims of the public good are attained by a good
organisation of the governmental mechanism, by the establishment of rational
laws, and by a series of measures of observation, coercion, punishment,
encouragement, etc. But however well worked-out the laws may be, and however
perfected may be the governmental mechanism, courts and administration, this
still will not lead to the attainment of the good ends of the state if citizens
do not strive on their own initiative to live in accordance with justice and
their own moral duty. A living, self-dependent feeling of moral duty in
the souls of citizens is the foundation of the public good: when this is
present, the very oversights of the law and the authorities do not become
particularly fatal, for the citizens will not hurry to exploit the possibility
of abuse, and by their own self-dependent moral acts will significantly correct
the evil permitted by the imperfection of the law or the governmental
mechanism. On the contrary, however, in the absence of a self-dependent
striving of the citizens to act in accordance with righteousness, there will be
no question of the State keeping track of everyone, and there will be nobody to
keeping an eye on them, for the State’s agents themselves, as products of
society, will always have the same character and the same level of morality as
exists in the people.
“Thus a living moral
feeling constitutes the foundation for the success of the State’s actions.
But the State does not of itself have the means to generate this feeling
that is necessary to it. The State can take measures that the moral feeling
should not be undermined by the spread of immoral teachings or the demoralising
spectacle of vice triumphant, etc. By a firm insistence on the fulfilment of
the prescribed norms of life and by the systematic punishment of crime the State
can ‘drill’ the citizens, make the observance of righteousness into a habit.
But all this has a useful significance only if the moral feeling is somehow
‘generated’ in souls, that is, when the ‘material’ by which the mechanical
measures can operate already exists.
“Whence is this
necessary material to be taken? By what is the moral feeling ‘generated’?
“… In itself,
by its very nature, the moral feeling is not social, but religious…
“The moral
feeling of man is the demand that his feelings and actions should be in harmony
with a ‘higher’ power of the world’s life… Man wishes to be in union with this
higher power, leaving aside all calculations of benefit or non-benefit. Out of
all that life can give him, he finds the greatest joy in the consciousness of
his union with the very foundation of the world’s powers…
“Man impresses
his idea of what is the main, highest world power, and his striving to be in
harmony with it, in all spheres of his creativity, including Statehood.
“Therefore the
State has all the more to protect and support everything in which the very generation
of the moral feeling takes place.
“In the vast
majority of cases – this is a general fact of history – people themselves
directly link the source of their moral feeling with the Divinity. It is
precisely in God that they see that higher power, harmony with which
constitutes their morality. Morality flows from religion, religion interprets
and confirms morality.
“Besides, it is
a general historical fact that people unite into special societies in order to
live together in accordance with their religious-moral tasks. These religious
organisations interweave with social and political organisations, but they are
never completely merged with them, even in the most theocratic States. In the
Christian world this collective religious life is carried out, as we know, in
the Church…
“In this way
the demand to preserve and develop social morality naturally leads the State to
a union with the Church. In trying to help the Church make society as moral as
possible, the State aims to use in its own work that moral capital which it
[the Church] builds up in people….
“Autonomous
morality, on the contrary, is founded on the premise that the innate moral
feeling guides man by itself. We do not know from where this feeling, this
‘altruism’, comes from, but it rules our moral acts just as the force of
gravity rules the movement of the heavenly lights. The religious principle, qua impulse, is quite unnecessary. To clarify what must
and what must not be done, we need only enlightenment, knowledge of the needs
of man and society, an understanding of the solidarity of human interests, etc.
“From this
point of view, the work of the State in the development of morality comes down
to the development of the school and the multiplication of other means of the
development of enlightenment, perhaps with the teaching of ‘courses of
morality’….
“The tendency
to substitute the school for the Church is now [in 1903] very strong, and in
general the State and the law of contemporary countries have to all practical
purposes already done much for the triumph of the idea of autonomous morality
in place of religious morality….
“’Autonomous’
morality leads to an endless diversity of moral rules, and to the disappearance
of any generally accepted line of behaviour.
“Moreover, the
right of the person to have his ‘autonomous’ morality annihilates the
possibility of public moral discipline. Whatever foulness a man may have
committed, he can always declare that according to ‘his’ morality this act is
permissible or even very lofty. Society has no criterion by which to reproach
the lie contained in such a declaration. It can kill such a person, but it
cannot morally judge him or despise him. But this ‘moral’ condemnation is
society’s most powerful weapon for the education of the person, beginning from
childhood and throughout almost the whole course of a man’s life…
“All in all,
therefore, the autonomy of morality leads to moral chaos, in which neither law
nor custom nor public opinion are possible – that is, no social or political
discipline in general…
“Even leaving aside plain debauchery, which
unbridles predatory instincts and similar phenomena, developing autonomy under
its all-permissive protection, and taking into consideration only chosen
natures that are truly endowed with a subtle moral feeling, we nevertheless
find in them an extremely harmful, fruitlessly revolutionary type of character,
an element that is forever striving to destroy social-political forms, but
which is satisfied with no new constructions. In the cultured world we have
already been observing such a picture for more than one hundred years
now…"[175]
The
Enlightenment Programme: A Critique
J.H. Randall, Jr. writes: “It was from the
spread of reason and science among individual men that the great apostles of
the Enlightenment hoped to bring about the ideal society of mankind. And from
there they hoped for a veritable millenium. From the beginning of the
[eighteenth] century onward there arose one increasing paean of progress
through education. Locke, Helvétius, and Bentham laid the foundations
for this generous dream; all men, of whatever school, save only those who
clung… to the Christian doctrine of original sin, believed with all their
ardent natures in the perfectibility of the human race. At last mankind held in
its own hands the key to its destiny: it could make the future almost what it
would. By destroying the foolish errors of the past and returning to a rational
cultivation of nature, there were scarcely any limits to human welfare that
might not be transcended.
“It is difficult for us to realize how
recent a thing is this faith in human progress. The ancient world seems to have
had no conception of it; Greeks and Romans looked back rather to the Golden Age
from which man had degenerated. The Middle Ages, of course, could brook no such
thought. The Renaissance, which actually accomplished so much, could not
imagine that man could ever rise again to the level of glorious antiquity; its
thoughts were all on the past. Only with the growth of science in the
seventeenth century could men dare to cherish such an overweening ambition… All
the scientists, from Descartes down, despised the ancients and carried the day
for the faith in progress.”[176]
There were
obvious deficiencies in this supremely optimistic view of the world. In the
first place, it failed to explain the existence of evil, much of which could
not simply be ascribed to prejudice and bad education. If this was the best of
all possible worlds, as Leibniz claimed, why did the terrible earthquake of
Lisbon in 1755 take place? Some fault in the harmony of God’s laws? Or a
deliberate irruption of God’s wrath into a sinful world? In either case one had
to admit, with Voltaire himself, that “the world does, after all, contain
evil”, and that either nature was not harmonious and perfect, or that
God did intervene in its workings – postulates that were both contrary
to the Enlightenment creed.
Secondly, it
failed to satisfy the cravings of the religious man; for man, again contrary to
the Enlightenment creed, is not only a rational animal, but also a religious
animal. Already in the first half of the century these cravings were
seeking outlets in more emotional forms of religion, the very opposite of
enlightened calm. Such was Methodism in England and Pietism in Germany,
Revivalism and the Great Awakening in America and “Convulsionarism” in France.
In some ways,
however, these very emotional, passionate forms of religion worked in the same
direction as the cult of reason. They, too, tended to minimise the importance
of theology and dogma, and to maximise the importance of man and human activity
and human passion. Thus in American Revivalism, writes Cragg, “conversion was
described in terms of how a man felt, the new life was defined in terms of how
he acted. This was more than an emphasis on the moral consequences of obedience
to God; it was a preoccupation with man, and it became absorbed in what he did
and in the degree to which he promoted righteousness. In a curious way man’s
activity was obscuring the cardinal fact of God’s rule.”[177]
Moreover, the
rationalists became adept at explaining religion without recourse to God’s rule
or revelation. Religion was simply a “need”, no different in principle from
other biological and psychological needs. Indeed, later rationalists such as
Freud came to explain religion in terms of these other needs. Of course, no
religious person – or rather, no person, religious or not, who simply wishes to
examine the facts objectively - will find such explanations even remotely
convincing. But it must be admitted that, unconvincing though their
explanations might be, the Enlightenment philosophers managed to convince
enough people to create whole generations of men possessing not even a spark of
that religious “enthusiasm” which they so despised.
Were they happier for it? Of course,
worldly “happiness” as the goal of life is in itself an Enlightenment
criterion, which would be rejected by believers. But let us see whether the
Enlightenment attained the goal it set itself.
The immediate result of the Enlightenment,
as we shall see in more detail later, was the French revolution and all those
nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutions that took their inspiration from
it, with all their attendant bloodshed and misery, destroying both the bodies
(and souls) of men on a hitherto unexampled scale. Science and reason and
education have indeed spread throughout the world. And yet poverty has not been
abolished, nor war nor disease nor crime. Indeed, all these traditional
scourges of mankind, which the Enlightenment promised to abolish, appear to be
on the increase at the time of writing. If it were possible to measure
“happiness” scientifically (which, of course, it is not), then it is highly
doubtful whether the majority of men are any happier at the beginning of the
twenty-first century than they were before the bright beams of the Enlightenment
began to dawn on the world.
Condorcet wrote: “The time will come when
the sun will shine only upon a world of free men who recognise no master except
their reason, when tyrants and slaves, priests, and their stupid or
hypocritical tools will no longer exist except in history or on the stage”.
That time has not yet come. Most men do indeed “recognise no master except
their reason”. But there are still tyrants and slaves (and priests) – and no
discernible decrease in the sum total of human misery.
It is especially the savagery of the
twentieth century that has convinced us of this. As Nadezhda Mandelstam writes:
“We have seen the triumph of evil after the values of humanism have been
vilified and trampled on. The reason these values succumbed was probably that
they were based on nothing except boundless confidence in the human intellect.”[178]
And the reason why “boundless confidence
in the human intellect” has brought us to this pass is that, as L.A. Tikhomirov
writes, the cult of reason “very much wants to establish worldly prosperity, it
very much wants to make people happy, but it will achieve nothing, because it
approaches the problem from the wrong end.
“It may appear strange that people who
think only of earthly prosperity, and who put their whole soul into realising
it, attain only disillusionment and exhaustion. People who, on the contrary,
are immersed in cares about the invisible life beyond the grave, attain here,
on earth, results constituting the highest examples yet known on earth of
personal and social development! However, this strangeness is self-explanatory.
The point is that man is by his nature precisely the kind of being that
Christianity understands him to be by faith; the aims of life that are
indicated to him by faith are precisely the kind of aims that he has in
reality, and not the kind that reason divorced from faith delineates. Therefore
in educating a man in accordance with the Orthodox world-view, we conduct his
education correctly, and thence we get results that are good not only in
that which is most important [salvation] (which unbelievers do not worry
about), but also in that which is secondary (which is the only thing they set
their heart on). In losing faith, and therefore ceasing to worry about
the most important thing, people lost the possibility of developing man in
accordance with his true nature, and so they get distorted results in earthly
life, too.”[179]
The problem is that “reason is a
subordinate capacity. If it is not directed by the lofty single organ of
religion perception – the feeling of faith, it will be directed by the lower
strivings, which are infinitely numerous. Hence all the heresies, all the
‘fractions’, all contemporary reasonings, too. This is a path of seeking which
we can beforehand predict will lead to endless disintegration, splintering and
barrenness in all its manifestations, and so in the end it will only exhaust
people and lead them to a false conviction that in essence religious truth does
not exist.”[180]
And yet such a conclusion will be reached
only if the concept of reason is limited in a completely arbitrary manner. For,
as Copleston points out, the idea of reason of the Enlightenment philosophers
“was limited and narrow. To exercise reason meant for them pretty well to think
as les philosophes thought; whereas to anyone who believes that God has
revealed Himself it is rational to accept this revelation and irrational to
reject it.”[181]
But the Enlightenment philosophers not
only limited and narrowed the concept or reason: they then deified that reduced
and imporverished faculty. As Berlin writes: “Reason is always right. To every
question there is only one true answer which with sufficient assiduity can be
infallibly discovered, and this applies no less to questions of ethics or
politics, of personal and social life, than to the problems of physics or
mathematics. Once found, the putting of a solution into practice is a matter of
mere technical skill; but the traditional enemies of progress [priests and despots]
must first be removed, and men taught the importance of acting in all questions
on the advice of disinterested experts whose knowledge is founded on reason and
experience. Once this has been achieved, the path is clear to the millenium.
“But the influence of environment is no
less important than that of education. If you should wish to foretell the
course of a man’s life, you must consider such factors as the character of the
region in which he lives, its climate, the fertility of its soil, its distance
from the sea, in addition to his physical characteristics and the nature of his
daily occupation. Man is an object in nature, and the human soul, like material
substance, is swayed by no supernatural influences and possesses no occult
properties; its entire behaviour can be adequately accounted for by means of
ordinary verifiable physical hypotheses. The French materialist La Mettrie
developed this empiricism to, and indeed beyond its fullest limits in a
celebrated treatise, L’Homme Machine, which caused much scandal at the
time of its publication. His views were an extreme example of opinions shared
in varying degrees by the editors of the Encyclopedia, Diderot and d’Alembert,
by Holbach, Helvétius and Condillac, who, whatever their other differences,
were agreed that man’s principal difference from the plants and lower animals
lies in his possession of self-consciousness, in his awareness of certain of
his own processes, in his capacity to use reason and imagination, to conceive
ideal purposes and to attach moral values to any activity or characteristic in
accordance with its tendency to forward or retard the ends which he desires to
realise. A serious difficulty which this view involved was that of reconciling
the existence of free will on the one hand, with complete determination by
character and environment on the other; this was only the old conflict between
free will and divine foreknowledge in a new form, with Nature in the place of
God. Spinoza had observed that if a stone falling through the air could think,
it might well imagine that it had freely chosen its own path, being unaware of
the external causes, such as the aim and force of the thrower and the natural
medium, which determine its fall. Similarly, it is only ignorance of the
natural causes of his behaviour that makes man suppose himself in some fashion
different from the falling stone: omniscience would quickly dispel this vain
delusion, even though the feeling of freedom to which it gives rise may itself
persist, but without its power to deceive. So far as extreme empiricism is
concerned, this deterministic doctrine can be made consistent with optimistic
rationalism: but it carries the very opposite implications with regard to the
possibility of reform in human affairs. For if men are made saints or criminals
solely by the movement of matter in space, the educators are as rigorously
determined to act as they do, as are those whom it is their duty to educate.
Everything occurs as it does as a result of unalterable processes of nature; and
no improvement can be effected by the free decisions of individuals, however
wise, however benevolent and powerful, since they cannot, any more than any
other entity, alter natural necessity. This celebrated crux, stripped of its
old theological dress, emerged even more sharply in its secular form; it
presented equal difficulties to both sides, but became obscured by the larger
issues at stake. Atheists, sceptics, deists, materialists, rationalists,
democrats, utilitarians, belonged to one camp; theists, metaphysicians,
supporters and apologists of the existing order to the other. The rift between
enlightenment and clericalism was so great, and the war between them so savage,
that doctrinal difficulties within each camp passed relatively unperceived.”[182]
The
contradiction between freewill and natural necessity was in fact a much greater
problem for the philosophes than for their theist opponents; but Berlin,
being himself an atheist, chose to overlook this. However, let us now turn to
another philosopher, a theist this time, for a deeper explanation of the
contradiction at the heart of the Enlightenment. Although C.S. Lewis’ argument
is directed first of all against two later products of the Enlightenment –
Marxism and Freudianism – it applies in a general way to all attempts to
enthrone reason above everything else:-
“It is a disastrous discovery, as Emerson
says somewhere, that we exist. I mean, it is disastrous when instead of merely
attending to a rose we are forced to think of ourselves looking at the rose,
with a certain type of mind and a certain type of eyes. It is disastrous
because, if you are not very careful, the colour of the rose gets attributed to
our optic nerves and is scent to our noses, and in the end there is no rose
left. The professional philosophers have been bothered about this universal
black-out for over two hundred years, and the world has not much listened to
them. But the same disaster is now occurring on a level we can all understand.
“We have recently ‘discovered that we
exist’ in two new senses. The Freudians have discovered that we exist as
bundles of complexes. The Marxians have discovered that we exist as members of
some economic class. In the old days, it was supposed that if a thing seemed
obviously true to a hundred men, then it was probably true in fact. Nowadays
the Freudian will tell you to go and analyze the hundred: you will find that
they all think Elizabeth [I] a great queen because they have a mother-complex.
Their thoughts are psychologically tainted at the source. And the Marxist will
tell you to go and examine the economic interests of the hundred; you will find
that they all think freedom a good thing because they are all members of the
bourgeoisie whose prosperity is increased by a policy of laissez-faire.
Their thoughts are ‘ideologically tainted’ at the source.
“Now this is obviously great fun; but it
has not always been noticed that there is a bill to pay for it. There are two
questions that people who say this kind of things ought to be asked. The first
is, Are all thoughts thus tainted at the source, or only some? The
second is, Does the taint invalidate the tainted thought – in the sense of
making it untrue – or not?
“If they say that all thoughts are
thus tainted, then, of course, we must remind them that Freudianism and Marxism
are as much systems of thought as Christian theology or philosophical idealism.
The Freudian and the Marxist are in the same boat with all the rest of us, and
cannot criticize us from outside. They have sawn off the branch they were
sitting on. If, on the other hand, they say that the taint need not invalidate
their thinking, then neither need it invalidate ours. In which case they have
saved their own branch, but also saved ours along with it.
“The only line they can really take is to
say that some thoughts are tainted and others are not – which has the advantage
(if Freudians and Marxians regard it as an advantage) of being what every sane
man has always believed. But if that is so, then we must ask how you find out
which are tainted and which are not. It is no earthly use saying that those are
tainted which agree with the secret wishes of the thinker. Some of the
things I should like to believe must in face be true; it is impossible to
arrange a universe which contradicts everyone’s wishes, in every respect, at
every moment. Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large
balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of
mine is ‘wishful thinking’. You can never come to any conclusion by examining
my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and
work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then
only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my
arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological
condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong,
then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at
my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant –
but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be
wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with thinking and all
systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating
about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You
must find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down
as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological
causes of the error.
“In other words, you must show that
a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern
method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then
distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how
he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this
vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism.
Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel
Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his
mother say to his father – who had been maintaining that two sides of a
triangle were together greater than the third – ‘Oh you say that because you
are a man.’ ‘At that moment,’ E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across
my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of
argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and
the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse
still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism
of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ This is how Bulver became one of the
makers of the Twentieth Century.
“I find the fruits of his discovery almost
everywhere. Thus I see my religion dismissed on the grounds that ‘the
comfortable parson had every reason for assuring the nineteenth century worker
that poverty would be rewarded in another world’. Well, no doubt he had. On the
assumption that Christianity is an error, I can see early enough that some
people would still have a motive for inculcating it. I see it so easily that I
can, of course, play the game the other way round, by saying that ‘the modern
man has every reason for trying to convince himself that there are no eternal
sanctions behind the morality he is rejecting’. For Bulverism is a truly
democratic game in the sense that all can play it all day long, and that it
gives no unfair privilege to the small and offensive minority who reason. But
of course it gets us not one inch nearer to deciding whether, as a matter of
fact, the Christian religion is true or false. That question remains to be
discussed on quite different grounds – a matter of philosophical and historical
argument. However it were decided, the improper motives of some people, both
for believing it and for disbelieving it, would remain just as they are.
“I see Bulverism at work in every
political argument. The capitalists must be bad economists because we know why
they want capitalism, and equally the Communists must be bad economists because
we know why they want Communism. Thus, the Bulverists on both sides. In
reality, of course, either the doctrines of the capitalists are false, or the
doctrines of the Communists, or both; but you can only find out the rights and
wrongs by reasoning – never by being rude about your opponent’s psychology.
“Until Bulverism is crushed, reason can
play no effective part in human affairs. Each side snatches it early as a
weapon against the other; but between the two reason itself is discredited. And
why should reason not be discredited? It would be easy, in answer, to point to
the present state of the world, but the real answer is even more immediate. The
forces discrediting reason, themselves depend on reasoning. You must reason
even to Bulverize. You are trying to prove that all proofs are
invalid. If you fail, you fail. If you succeed, then you fail even more – for
the proof that all proofs are invalid must be invalid itself.
“The alternative is either
self-contradicting idiocy or else some tenacious belief in our power of
reasoning, held in the teeth of all the evidence that Bulverists can bring for
a ‘taint’ in this or that human reasoner. I am ready to admit, if you like,
that this tenacious belief has something transcendental or mystical about it.
What then? Would you rather be a lunatic than a mystic?
“So we see there is a justification for
holding on to our belief in Reason. But can this be done without theism? Does
‘I know’ involve that God exists? Everything I know is an inference from
sensation (except the present moment). All our knowledge of the universe beyond
our immediate experiences depends on inferences from these experiences. If our
inferences do not give a genuine insight into reality, then we can know
nothing. A theory cannot be accepted if it does not allow our thinking to be a
genuine insight, nor if the fact of our knowledge is not explicable in terms of
that theory.
“But our thoughts can only accepted as a
genuine insight under certain conditions. All beliefs have causes but a
distinction must be drawn between (1) ordinary causes and (2) a special kind of
cause called ‘a reason’. Causes are mindless events which can produce other
results than belief. Reasons arise from axioms and inferences and affect only
beliefs. Bulverism tries to show that the other man has causes and not reasons
and that we have reasons and not causes. A belief which can be accounted for
entirely in terms of causes in worthless. This principle must not be abandoned
when we consider the beliefs which are the basis of others. Our knowledge
depends on the certainty about axioms and inferences. If these are the result
of causes, then there is no possibility of knowledge. Either we can know nothing
or thought has reasons only, and no causes…
“It is admitted that the mind is affected
by physical events; a wireless set is influenced by atmospherics, but it does
not originate its deliverances – we’d take notice of it if we thought it did.
Natural events we can relate to another until we can trace them finally to the
space-time continuum. But thought has no father but thought. It is conditioned,
yes, not caused…
“The same argument applies to our values,
which are affected by social factors, but if they are caused by them we cannot
know that they are right. One can reject morality as an illusion, but the man
who does so often tacitly excepts his own ethical motive: for instance the duty
of freeing morality from superstition and of spreading enlightenment.
“Neither Will nor Reason is the product of
Nature. Therefore either I am self-existent (a belief which no one can accept) or
I am a colony of some Thought or Will that are self-existent. Such reason and
goodness as we can attain must be derived from a self-existent Reason and
Goodness outside ourselves, in fact, a Supernatural…”[183]
Thus Lewis, far from decrying Reason, in
fact vindicates it; but only by showing that Reason is independent of Nature.
But in doing this he shatters the foundations of Enlightenment thinking. For
the whole Enlightenment enterprise was based on two fundamental axioms: (a)
that Truth and Goodness are attainable by Reason alone, without the need for
Divine Revelation; and (b) that Reason, as a function of Man, and not of God,
is entirely a product of Nature. What Lewis demonstrates is that even if (a)
were true, which it is not, it could only be true if (b) were false. But the
Enlightenment insisted that both were true, and therefore condemned the whole
movement of western thought founded upon it to sterility and degeneration into
nihilism.[184]
The whole tragedy of western man since the
Enlightenment – or rather, since the Renaissance, for that is when the
exaltation of human reason began - is that in exalting himself and a single,
fallen and truncated faculty of his mind to a position of infallibility equal
to that of the Divine Word, it has denied him his true dignity and rationality,
making him a function of irrational nature – in effect, sub-human. But man is
great, not because he can reason in the sense of ratiocinate, that is, make
deductions and inferences from axioms and empirical evidence, but because he
can reason in accordance with the Reason that created and sustains all things,
that is, in accordance with the Word and Wisdom of God in Whose image he was
made. It is when man tries to make his reason autonomous, independent of its
origin and inspiration in the Divine Reason, that he falls to the level of
irrationality. For “Man, being in honour, did not understand; he is compared to
the mindless cattle, and is become like unto them” (Psalm 48.12).
6. THE PETERSBURG EMPIRE
As
for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.
O
My people! Those who lead you cause you to err,
And
destroy the way of your paths.
Isaiah 3.12
By
God’s dispensation it has fallen to me to correct both the state and the
clergy; I am to them both sovereign and patriarch ; they have forgotten that in
antiquity these [roles] were combined.
Tsar
Peter the Great.
In humiliating the Church in the eyes of
the people, Peter cut down one of the deepest and most nutritious roots on
which the tree of autocracy stood, grew and developed.
L.A.
Tikhomirov, Monarkhicheskaya Gosudarstvennost’.
Metropolitan Anastasius (Gribanovsky) of
New York once wrote: “The Kievan period of our history relates to the Muscovite
period a childhood and adolescence to
mature manhood. Kiev is the semi-conscious epoch of our national life,
which often disappears into legend and tales. Moscow is the living and
completely conscious period of our state and social construction, the maturity
of our people’s genius.”[185]
According to this schema, the Petersburg period of Russian life corresponds to
middle age, and the Soviet period – to senility and death…
The Petersburg epoch was the epoch in
which the Russian State lost some of the characteristics of an Orthodox
autocracy and took on some of the characteristics of a Western absolutist
monarchy. The difference between the Orthodox autocracy and the absolutist
monarchies was explained by Nicholas Berdyaev as follows: “What is the essence
of the religious idea of the [Orthodox] autocracy, and in what does it differ
from absolutism? There are no rights to power, but only obligations of power.
The power of the tsar is by no means absolute, unrestricted power. It is
autocratic because its source is not the will of the people and it is not
restricted by the people. But it is restricted by the Church and by Christian
righteousness; it is spiritually subject to the Church; it serves not its own
will, but the will of God. The tsar must not have his own will, but he must
serve the will of God. The tsar and the people are bound together by one and
the same faith, by one and the same subjection to the Church and the
righteousness of God. Autocracy presupposes a wide national social basis living
its own self-sufficient life; it does not signify the suppression of the
people’s life. Autocracy is justified only if the people has beliefs which
sanction the power of the tsar. It cannot be an external violence inflicted on
the people. The tsar is autocratic only if he is a truly Orthodox tsar. The
defective Orthodoxy of Peter the Great and his inclination towards
Protestantism made him an absolute, and not an autocratic monarch. Absolute
monarchy is a child of humanism… In absolutism the tsar is not a servant of the
Church. A sign of absolute monarchy is the subjection of the Church to the
State. That is what happened to the Catholic Church under Louis XIV. Absolutism
always develops a bureaucracy and suppresses the social life of the people.”[186]
From the spiritual point of view the
results of the transformation of the Russian monarchy from an autocracy into an
absolutist state were disastrous. Heresy and freethinking flourished, and for a
time during the reign of the Empress Anna the leadership of the Orthodox Church
was actively persecuted. As Florovsky writes: “Learning opposed ‘superstition’
and often faith and piety were understood to come under that hated designation.
Naturally this was the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. The business-like and
utilitarian struggle with superstition during Peter’s reign anticipated the
luxurious freethinking and libertinism of Catherine’s reign.”[187]
Nevertheless, while groaning beneath this western yoke, the people
retained its Orthodox faith, making possible the slow but steady, if incomplete
return of Russia to its pre-Petrine traditions from the reign of the Emperor
Paul onwards. Thus while the eighteenth century represented the deepest nadir
yet in Russian statehood, Russia still remained recognisably Russia, the chief
bearer and defender of Orthodoxy in the world.
The
Beginnings of Russian Masonry
The
westernisation of official Russia was accomplished by a revolution from above,
by Tsar Peter I and his successors, especially Catherine II. However, state
power would have been insufficient to carry out such a radical change if it had
not been supported and propelled by the spread of Masonic ideas among the
aristocracy, in whose hands the real power rested after the death of Peter. So
before examining Peter’s reforms, it will be useful to examine the beginnings
of Masonry in Russia.
“There is
no doubt,” writes Ivanov, “that the seeds of Masonry were sown in Russian by
the ‘Jacobites’, supporters of the English King James II, who had been cast out
of their country by the revolution and found a hospitable reception at the
court of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich.
“Independently of the Masonic propaganda of the Jacobite Masons, the
Russians had learned of the existence of the mysterious union of free
stonemasons during their journeys abroad. Thus, for example, Boris Petrovich
Sheremetev had got to known Masonry during his travels. Sheremetev had been given
a most triumphant meeting on Malta. He took part in the great feast of the
Maltese order in memory of John the Forerunner, and they had given him a
triumphant banquet there. The grand-master had bestowed on him the valuable
Maltese cross made of gold and diamonds. On returning to Moscow on February 10,
1699, Sheremetev was presented to the Tsar at a banquet on February 12 at
Lefort’s, dressed in German clothes and wearing the Maltese cross. He received
‘great mercy’ from the Tsar, who congratulated him on becoming a Maltese
cavalier and gave him permission to wear this cross at all times. Then a decree
was issued that Sheremetev should be accorded the title of ‘accredited Maltese
cavalier’.
“’The
early shoots of Russian Masonry,’ writes Vernadsky, ‘were particularly possible
in the fleet, since the fleet had been created entirely on western models and
under western influence.
“’In one
manuscript of the Public library the story is told that Peter was received into
the Scottish degree of St. Andrew, and ‘made an undertaking that he would
establish this order in Russia, a promise which he carried out (in the form of
the order of St. Andrew the First-Called, which was established in 1698).…
“’Among
the manuscripts of the Mason Lansky, there is a piece of grey paper on which
this fact is recorded: ‘The Emperor Peter I and Lefort were received into the
Templars in Holland.’
“In the Public library manuscript ‘A View
on the Philosophers and the French Revolution’ (1816), it is indicated that Masonry
‘existed during the time of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich. Bruce was its great
master, while Tsar Peter was its first inspector.’”[188]
Why did Russians join the lodges? Because,
according to Sir Geoffrey Hosking, they “became a channel by which young men
aspiring to high office or good social standing could find acquaintances and
protectors among their superiors; in the Russian milieu this meant an easier
and pleasanter way of rising up the Table of Ranks… “[189]
There were deeper reasons, however. “Freemasonry,”
as Walicki points out, “had a dual function: on the one hand, it could draw
people away from the official Church and, by rationalizing religious
experience, could contribute to the gradual secularisation of their world view;
on the other hand, it could attract people back to religion and draw them away
from the secular and rationalistic philosophy of the Enlightenment. The first
function was fulfilled most effectively by the rationalistic and deistic wing
of the movement, which set the authority of reason against that of the Church
and stood for tolerance and the freedom of the individual. The deistic variety
of Freemasonry flourished above all in England, where it had links with the
liberal movement, and in France, where it was often in alliance with the
encyclopedists. The second function was most often fulfilled by the mystical
trend, although this too could represent a modernization of religious faith,
since the model of belief it put forward was fundamentally anti-ecclesiastical
and postulated a far-reaching internalisation of faith founded on the soul’s
immediate contact with God.”[190]
Russians,
though not uninfluenced by the rationalist side of Masonry, were especially
drawn by its mystical side. For, as Janet Hartley writes: “Educated young men
who felt unfulfilled by the Orthodox Church, or repelled by the ignorance of
the parish clergy, looked to the West for alternatives. Freemasonry was one
such movement to which many turned….
“… Becoming a mason was an experience not
dissimilar to a ‘religious conversion’… Many young nobles found comfort in the
rituals of freemasonry, in a way which parallels the popularity and importance
given to rituals in Orthodoxy. To others, freemasonry offered a seemingly pure
and moral set of ethical standards, which, although they were based on
Christian precepts, they felt they had not been able to practise satisfactorily
within the Orthodox Church. The didactic and humanitarian elements of Russian
freemasonry – providing help, education, dissemination of useful information,
translation activity and charity for all those who needed it – seemed to fill a
gap. Finally, freemasonry seemed to offer to some a solution to the conflicting
influences of western rational thought and the desire for a more personal,
spiritual, experience. ‘Finding myself at the crossroads between Voltairianism
and religion’, wrote Novikov, ‘I had no basis on which to work, no cornerstone
on which to build spiritual tranquillity, and therefore I fell into the
society.’”[191]
Tsar
Peter and the West
The conversion of Tsar Peter to Masonry
was the fulfilment of the fervent hopes of western Masons such as the
philosopher Leibnitz, who in 1696 had written to Ludolph: “If only the
Muscovite kingdom inclined to the enlightened laws of Europe, Christianity [sic]
would acquire the greatest fruits. There is, however, hope that the Muscovites
will arise from their slumbers. There is no doubt that Tsar Peter is conscious
of the faults of his subjects and desires to root out their ignorance little by
little.”[192]
According to K.F. Valishevsky, Leibnitz
“had worked out a grandiose plan of scientific undertakings, which could be
achieved with the help of the Muscovite monarch and in which the greatest
German philosopher marked out a role for himself. Leibnitz studied the history
and language of Russia.”[193]
And it was Leibnitz, together with his pupil Wolf, who played the leading role
in the foundation of the Russian Academy of Sciences.[194]
Tsar Peter’s conversion to Masonry and the
western ideals of civilisation was accompanied by strong eschatological
expectations. For “the coming of the Antichrist,” writes B.A. Uspensky, “was
expected in 1666, but when it was not fulfilled, they began to calculate it as
1666 years not from the Nativity of Christ, but from His Resurrection, that is,
they began to expect him in 1699 (1666+33=1699). And only a few days before the
beginning of this year (15 August, 1698 (one must bear in mind that the new
year began on the first of September) Peter appeared from his first journey
abroad. Besides, his arrival was immediately marked by a whole range of
cultural innovations (already in the next year there began the forcible shaving
of beards; the destruction of beards was marked for the new year, 1699: it was then
that there also began the struggle against Russian national dress and a range
of other reforms of the same kind).”[195]
Peter learned many useful things on his
journey to the West, especially as related to warfare. But in art and religion
the influences were harmful. Thus in 1699 or 1700, on a visit to Voronezh, he
ordered the bishop of the city, St. Metrophanes, to visit him at the palace he
had erected on an island in the River Voronezh. “Without delay the holy
hierarch set out on foot to go to the tsar. But when he entered the courtyard
which led to the palace, he saw that statues of the ancient Greek gods and
goddesses had been set up there on the tsar’s order, to serve as architectural
adornment. The holy one immediately returned to his residence. The sovereign
was apprised of this, but, not knowing the reason why the holy Metrophanes had
turned back, he sent another messenger to him with orders that he attend upon
the sovereign in the palace. But the saintly bishop replied: ‘Until the
sovereign commandeth that the idols, which scandalise all the people, be taken
away, I cannot set foot in the palace!’ Enraged by the holy hierarch’s reply,
the tsar sent him the following message: ‘If he will not come, he shall incur
the death sentence for disobedience to the powers that be.’ To this threat the
saint replied: ‘The sovereign hath authority over my life, but it is not seemly
for a Christian ruler to set up heathen idols and thus lead the hearts of the
simple into temptation.’ Towards evening, the tsar suddenly heard the great
bell of the cathedral toll, summoning the faithful to church. Since there was
no particular feast being celebrated the following day, he sent to ask the
bishop why the bell was being rung. ‘Because His Majesty has condemned me to be
executed, I, as a sinful man, must bring the Lord God repentance before my
death and ask forgiveness of my sins at a general service of prayer, and for
this cause I have ordered an all-night vigil to be served.’ When he learned of
this, the tsar laughed and straightway commanded that the holy hierarch be told
that his sovereign forgave him, and that he cease to alarm the people with the
extraordinary tolling. And afterwards, Tsar Peter ordered the statues removed.
One should understand that Peter never gave up his innovations, and if in this
respect he yielded, it merely demonstrates the great respect he cherished for
the bishop of Voronezh…”[196]
Peter never gave up his innovations –
including his blasphemous parodies of church services and personages – because
after the death of St. Metrophanes in 1703, and of St. Demetrius of Rostov in
1709, no senior churchman is known to have resisted his will in a consistent
manner.
Perhaps the most important and
dangerous influence that Peter had received on his journey to the West was that
of the Anglican Bishop Gilbert Burnet. The Tsar and the famous preacher had
many long talks, and according to Burnet what interested the Tsar most was his
exposition of the “authority that the Christian Emperours assumed in matters of
religion and the supremacy of our Kings”. Burnet told the Tsar that “the great
and comprehensive rule of all is, that a king should consider himself as
exalted by Almighty God into that high dignity as into a capacity of doing much
good and of being a great blessing to mankind, and in some sort a god on
earth”.[197] Peter
certainly came to believe a similar teaching concerning his role as tsar.
It had not always been so. Thus early in his reign, in 1701, he replied to some Catholic Saxons who proposed a union between the Orthodox and Catholic churches: “Sovereigns have rights only over the bodies of their people. Christ is the sovereign of their souls. For such a union, a general consent of the people is necessary and that is in the power of God alone….”[198]
Tsar Peter’s
Leviathan
Peter accomplished his programme – without
the general consent of the people - in two stages: from 1701 to 1720, and from
1721 to his death in 1725. In the first period, he gradually enslaved the
Church through a series of piecemeal measures, but was to some extent inhibited
by the intermittent resistance of the locum tenens, Metropolitan Stefan
Yavorsky of Ryazan, and of his own son, the Tsarevich Alexis. However, after
the execution of the Tsarevich and the effective replacement of Yavorsky by a
man more after his reforming heart, Metropolitan Theophanes Prokopovich of
Pskov, Peter set about a systematic codification and consolidation of his
reforms in his Ecclesiastical Regulation, published in 1721.
On January 24, 1701 Peter ordered the
re-opening of the Monastirsky Prikaz which Patriarch Nicon had so
struggled against. The Prikaz was authorized to collect all state taxes
and peasant dues from the estates of the church, as well as purely
ecclesiastical emoluments. A large proportion of this sum was then given to the
state to help the war-effort against Sweden. In other words, while the Church
was not formally dispossessed, the State took complete control over her
revenues. St. Demetrius of Rostov protested: “You want to steal the things of
the Church? Ask Heliodorus, Seleucus’ treasurer, who wanted to go to Jerusalem
to steal the things of the Church. He was beaten by the hands of an angel.”[199]
However, the “reforms” continued. The
Church lost not only her economic independence, but also her judicial
independence, her ability to judge her own people in her own courts – a right
that she had possessed since the time of St. Vladimir. The State demanded that
monastic and secular clergy be defrocked for transgressing certain state laws.
It put limits on the numbers of clergy, and of new church buildings. Monks were
confined to their monasteries, no new monasteries could be founded, and the old
ones were turned into hospitals and rest-homes for retired soldiers.
“Under Peter”, writes Andrew Bessmertny,
“a fine for the giving of alms (from 5 to 10 rubles) was introduced, together
with corporal punishments followed by cutting out of the nostrils and exile to
the galleys 'for the proclamation of visions and miracles’. In 1723 a decree
forbidding the tonsuring of monks was issued, with the result that by 1740
Russian monasticism consisted of doddery old men, while the founder of
eldership, St. Paisius Velichkovsky, was forced to emigrate to Moldavia.
Moreover, in the monasteries they introduced a ban on paper and ink - so as to
deprive the traditional centres of book-learning and scholarship of their
significance. Processions through the streets with icons and holy water were
also banned (almost until the legislation of 1729)! At the same time, there
appeared... the government ban on Orthodox transferring to other confessions of
faith.”[200]
It was not only the Church that suffered
from Peter’s drive to westernize and modernize the country. The nobility were
chained to public service in the bureaucracy or the army; the peasants - to the
land. And the whole country was subjected, by force at times, to the cultural,
scientific and educational influence of the West.
This transformation was symbolized
especially by the building, at great cost in human lives, of a new capital at
St. Petersburg. Situated at the extreme western end of the vast empire as
Peter's 'window to the West', this extraordinary city was largely built by
Italian architects on the model of Amsterdam, peopled by shaven and pomaded
courtiers who spoke more French than Russian, and ruled, from the middle of the
eighteenth century onwards, by monarchs of German origin. The result was, as
Catherine the Great’s Nakaz put it, that “Russia is a European state”
(art. 6).
The measure that most shockingly revealed
the extent of the State’s invasion of the Church’s life was the demand that
priests break the seal of confession and report on any parishioners who
confessed anti-government sentiments. Thus did Peter create a “police state” in
which the priests were among the policemen. Now “a ‘police state’,” writes
Florovsky, “is not only, or even largely, an outward reality, but more an inner
reality: it is less a structure than a style of life; not only a political
theory, but also a religious condition. ‘Policism’ represents the urge to build
and ‘regularize’ a country and a people’s entire life – the entire life of each
individual inhabitant – for the sake of his own and the ‘general welfare’ or
‘common good’. ‘Police’ pathos, the pathos of order and paternalism, proposes
to institute nothing less than universal welfare and well-being, or, quite
simply, universal ‘happiness’. [But] guardianship all too quickly becomes
transformed into surveillance. Through its own paternalist inspiration, the
‘police state’ inescapably turns against the church. It also usurps the
church’s proper function and confers them upon itself. It takes on the
undivided care for the people’s religious and spiritual welfare.”[201]
So
if Peter was a tyrant, he was nevertheless not a conventional tyrant, but one
who genuinely wanted the best for his country. And in spite of the drunken
orgies in which he mocked her institutions and rites, he did not want to
destroy the Church, but only “reform” her in directions which he thought would
make her more efficient and “useful”. Some of the “reforms’ were harmful. Thus
he thought it “useful” to allow mixed marriages in 1720 (the Holy Synod decreed
the next year that the children of these marriages should be Orthodox, which
mitigated, but did not remove the harmfulness of the decree). And some of them
were beneficial. Thus the decree that the lower age limit for ordination to the
diaconate should be twenty-five, and for the priesthood – thirty, although
motivated by a desire to limit the number of persons claiming exemption from
military service, especially “ignorant and lazy clergy”, nevertheless
corresponded to the canonical ages for ordination. Again, his measures ensuring
regular attendance at church by laypeople, if heavy-handed, at least
demonstrated his genuine zeal for the flourishing of Church life. Moreover, he
encouraged missionary work, especially in Siberia, where the sees of Tobolsk
and Irkutsk were founded and such luminaries as St. John of Tobolsk and St.
Innocent of Irkutsk flourished during his reign. And in spite of his own
Protestant tendencies, he blessed the publication of some, if not all, books
defending the principles of the Orthodox faith against Protestantism.
Peter’s main assistant in this revolution,
Prokopovich, who called Germany the mother of all countries and openly
expressed his sympathy with the German theologians. “Theophanes was naturally
accused of Lutheranism,” writes Zyzykin, “if not in the sense of accepting
[its] theological teaching, as in the sense of the general tendency of his
convictions and the direction of his activity. His child, which he together
with Peter I gave birth to, the Ecclesiastical Regulation, received the
most flattering review from the Protestants in a brochure which came out in
Germany under the title, Curieuse Nachrichten von der itzigen Religion Ihre
Kaiserlliched Majestät in Russland Petri Alexievich unde seines grossen
Reichs dass dasselbe ast nach Evangelisch Lutherischen Grundsätzen
eingerichtet sei. The brochure concluded by declaring that Peter was
drawing Orthodox Russia out on the path of Lutheranizing Russia, although there
were still some ‘remnants of Papism’ in her. ‘Instead of the Pope the Russians
had their Patriarch,’ writes the author of the brochure, ‘whose significance in
their country was as great as the significance of the Pope in Italy and the
Roman Catholic Church. The Russians preserved the veneration of the Saints…
Such is the Greek religion. But in Peter’s rule this religion changed a great
deal, for he understood that with true religion no sciences can bring benefit.
In Holland, England and Germany he learned what is the best, true and saving
faith, and he imprinted it firmly in his mind. His communion with Protestants
still more firmly established him in this manner of thought; we will not be
mistaken if we say that His Majesty saw Lutheranism as the true religion. For,
although so far in Russia things have not been built in accordance with the
principles of our true religion, nevertheless a beginning has been laid, and
are not prevented from believing in a happy outcome by the fact that we know
that crude and stubborn minds brought up in their superstitious Greek religion
cannot be changed immediately and yield only gradually; they must be brought,
like children, step by step to the knowledge of the truth.’ Peter’s
ecclesiastical reforms were for the author the earnest of the victory of
Protestantism in Russia: ‘The Tsar has removed the patriarchate and, following
the example of the Protestant princes, has declared himself to be the supreme
bishop of the country.’ The author praised Peter for setting about the reform
of the people’s way of life on his return from abroad. ‘As regards calling on
the Saints, His Majesty has indicated that the images of St. Nicholas should
not be anywhere in rooms, and that there should not be the custom of first
bowing to the icons on entering a house, and then to the master… The system of
education in the schools established by the Tsar is completely Lutheran, and
the young people are being brought up in the rules of the true Evangelical
religion. Monasteries have been significantly reduced since they can no longer
serve, as before, as dens for a multitude of idle people, who were a heavy
burden for the state and could be stirred up against it. Now all the monks are
obliged to study something good, and everything is constructed in a most
praiseworthy manner. Miracles and relics also no longer enjoy their former
veneration; in Russia, as in Germany, they have already begun to believe that
in this respect much has been fabricated. If calling on the Saints will be
phased out in Russia, then there will not be faith in personal merits before
God, and in good works, and the opinion that one can obtain a heavenly reward
by going round holy places or by generous contributions to the clergy and
monasteries will also disappear; so that the only means for attaining
blessedness will remain faith in Jesus Christ, Who is the base of true Evangelical
religion.’”[202]
The same attachment to Lutheranism,
especially as regards Church-State relations, is evident in the sermons of
Prokopovich, which is what attracted Peter’s attention to him. Thus in his
sermon on Palm Sunday, 1718, he said: “Do we not see here [in the story of
Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem] what honour is paid to the King? Does
this not require us not to remain silent about the duty of subjects to
esteem the supreme authority, and about the great resistance to this duty that
has been exposed in our country at the present time? For we see that not a
small part of the people abide in such ignorance that they do not know the
Christian doctrine concerning the secular authorities. Nay more, they do not
know that the supreme authority is established and armed with the sword by God,
and that to oppose it is a sin against God Himself, a sin to be punished by
death not temporal but eternal…
“Christians have to be subject even to
perverse and unbelieving rulers. How much more must they be utterly devoted to
an Orthodox and just sovereign? For the former are masters, but the latter are
also fathers. What am I saying? That our autocrat [Peter], and all autocrats,
are fathers. And where else will you find this duty of ours, to honour the
authorities sincerely and conscientiously, if not in the commandment: ‘Honour
thy father!’ All the wise teachers affirm this; thus Moses the lawgiver himself
instructs us. Moreover the authority of the state is the primary and ultimate
degree of fatherhood, for on it depends not a single individual, not one
household, but the life, the integrity, and the welfare of the whole great
nation.”[203]
Already in a school book published in 1702
Prokopovich had referred to the emperor as “the rock Peter on whom Christ has
built His Church”.[204]
And in another sermon dating from 1718 he “relates Peter, ‘the first of the
Russian tsars’, to his patron saint Peter, ‘the first of the apostles’. Like
the latter, tsar Peter has an ‘apostolic vocation… And what the Lord has
commanded your patron and apostle concerning His Church, you are to carry out
in the Church of this flourishing empire.’ This is a far-reaching theological
comparison…”[205]
In July, 1721 Prokopovich published an
essay “expressing the view that since Constantine’s time the Christian emperors
had exercised the powers of a bishop, ‘in the sense that they appointed the
bishops, who ruled the clergy’. This was, in short, a justification of Peter’s
assumption of complete jurisdiction over the government of the church; for a
‘Christian sovereign’, Prokopovich concluded in a celebrated definition of the
term, is empowered to nominate not only bishops, ‘but the bishop of bishops,
because the Sovereign is the supreme authority, the perfect, ultimate, and authentic
supervisor; that is, he holds supreme judicial and executive power over all the
ranks and authorities subject to him, whether secular or ecclesiastical’.
‘Patriarchalism [patriarshestvo]’ – the belief that a patriarch should
rule the autocephalous Russian church – Prokopovich equated with ‘papalism’,
and dismissed it accordingly.”[206]
The notion that no Patriarch, but only the
Tsar, was the father of the people was developed by Prokopovich in his Primer,
which consisted of an exposition of the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and
the Beatitudes: “Question. What is ordained by God in the fifth commandment
[‘Honour thy father and thy mother’]? Answer: To honour all those who are as
fathers and mothers to us. But it is not only parents who are referred to here,
but others who exercise paternal authority over us. Question: Who are such
persons? Answer: The first order of such persons are the supreme authorities
instituted by God to rule the people, of whom the highest authority is the
Tsar. It is the duty of kings to protect their subjects and to seek what is
best for them, whether in religious matters or in the things of this world; and
therefore they must watch over all the ecclesiastical, military, and civil
authorities subject to them and conscientiously see that they discharge their
respective duties. That is, under God, the highest paternal dignity; and
subjects, like good sons, must honour the Tsar. [The second order of persons
enjoying paternal authority are] the supreme rulers of the people who are
subordinate to the Tsar, namely: the ecclesiastical pastors, the senators, the
judges, and all other civil and military authorities.”[207]
As Cracraft justly observes, “the things
of God, the people were being taught by Prokopovich, were the things of Caesar,
and vice-versa: the two could not be distinguished.”[208]
The crown of Peter’s caesaropapist
legislation, his Ecclesiastical Regulation of 1721, established an
“Ecclesiastical College” in parallel with nine secular Colleges, or Ministries,
to replace the old patriarchal system. He did not hide the fact that he had
abolished the patriarchate because he did not want rivals to his single and
undivided dominion over Russia. “The fatherland,” intoned the Regulation,
“need not fear from an administrative council [the Ecclesiastical College] the
sedition and disorders that proceed from the personal rule of a single church
ruler. For the common fold do not perceive how different is the ecclesiastical
power from that of the Autocrat, but dazzled by the great honour and glory of
the Supreme Pastor [the patriarch], they think him a kind of second Sovereign,
equal to or even greater than the Autocrat himself, and imagine that the
ecclesiastical order is another and better state.
“Thus the people are accustomed to reason
among themselves, a situation in which the tares of the seditious talk of
ambitious clerics multiply and act as sparks which set dry twigs ablaze. Simple
hearts are perverted by these ideas, so that in some matters they look not so
much to their Autocrat as to the Supreme Pastor. And when they hear of a
dispute between the two, they blindly and stupidly take sides with the
ecclesiastical ruler, rather than with the secular ruler, and dare to conspire
and rebel against the latter. The accursed ones deceive themselves into
thinking that they are fighting for God Himself, that they do not defile but
hallow their hands even when they resort to bloodshed. Criminal and dishonest
persons are pleased to discover such ideas among the people: when they learn of
a quarrel between their Sovereign and the Pastor, because of their animosity
towards the former they seize on the chance to make good their malice, and
under pretence of religious zeal do not hesitate to take up arms against the
Lord’s Anointed; and to this iniquity they incite the common folk as if to the
work of God. And what if the Pastor himself, inflated by such lofty opinions of
his office, will not keep quiet? It is difficult to relate how great are the
calamities that thereby ensue.
“These are not our inventions: would to God
that they were. But in fact this has more than once occurred in many states.
Let us investigate the history of Constantinople since Justinian’s time, and we
shall discover much of this. Indeed the Pope by this very means achieved so
great a pre-eminence, and not only completely disrupted the Roman Empire, while
usurping a great part of it for himself, but more than once has profoundly
shaken other states and almost completely destroyed them. Let us not recall similar
threats which have occurred among us.
“In an ecclesiastical administrative
council there is no room for such mischief. For here the president himself
enjoys neither the great glory which amazes the people, nor excessive lustre;
there can be no lofty opinion of him; nor can flatterers exalt him with
inordinate praises, because what is done well by such an administrative council
cannot possible be ascribed to the president alone… Moreover, when the people
see that this administrative council has been established by decree of the
Monarch with the concurrence of the Senate, they will remain meek, and put away
any hope of receiving aid in their rebellions from the ecclesiastical order.”[209]
Thus the purely imaginary threat of a
papist revolution in Russia was invoked to effect a revolution in Church-State
relations along Protestant lines. The Catholic threat was already receding in
Peter’s time, although the Jesuits continued to make strenuous efforts to bring
Russia into the Catholic fold. The real threat came from the Protestant
monarchies, where caesaropapism was an article of faith. Sweden and Prussia
were the main models by the time of the Ecclesiastical Regulation, but
the original ideas had come during Peter’s earlier visit to England and Holland.
Thus, according to A. Dobroklonsky, “they say that in Holland William of Orange
advised him to make himself ‘head of religion’, so as to become the complete
master in his state.”[210]
The full extent of the Peter’s
Protestantisation and secularisation of the Church administration was revealed
by the oath that the clerics appointed to the Ecclesiastical College were
required to swear: “I acknowledge on oath that the Supreme Judge [Krainii
Sud’ya] of this Ecclesiastical College is the Monarch of All Russia
himself, our Most Gracious Sovereign”. And they promised “to defend unsparingly
all the powers, rights, and prerogatives belonging to the High Autocracy of His
Majesty” and his “august and lawful successors”. The Church historian, Igor
Smolitsch, called it the capitulation document of the Russian Church.[211]
Certainly, no Christian can recognise any mortal man as his supreme judge
in the literal sense.
The fundamental principle of Peter’s
reform was borrowed from Hobbes’ Leviathan: “He who is chief ruler in
any Christian state is also chief pastor, and the rest of the pastors are
created by his authority”.[212]
Similarly, according to Peter and Prokopovich, the chief ruler was empowered to
nominate not only bishops, “but the bishop of bishops [i.e. the patriarch],
because the Sovereign is the supreme authority, the perfect, ultimate, and
authentic supervisor; that is, he holds supreme judicial and executive power
over all the ranks and authorities subject to him, whether secular or
ecclesiastical”.
The Tsar henceforth took the place of the
Patriarch – or rather, of the Pope, for he consulted with his bishops much less
even than a Patriarch is obliged to with his bishops. Thus, as Uspensky
relates, “the bishops on entering the Emperor’s palace had to leave behind
their hierarchical staffs… The significance of this fact becomes comprehensible
if it is borne in mind that according to a decree of the Council of 1675
hierarchs left their staffs behind when concelebrating with the Patriarch…
Leaving behind the staff clearly signified hierarchical dependence…”[213]
As Bishop Nicodemus of Yeniseisk (+1874)
put it: “The Synod, according to Peter’s idea, is a political-ecclesiastical
institution parallel to every other State institution and for that reason under
the complete supreme commanding supervision of his Majesty. The idea is from
the Reformation, and is inapplicable to Orthodoxy; it is false. The Church is
her own Queen. Her Head is Christ our God. Her law is the Gospel.” Bishop
Nicodemus went on to say that in worldly matters the Tsar was the supreme
power, but “in spiritual matters his Majesty is a son of the Church” and
therefore subject to the authority of the Church.[214]
M.V. Zyzykin writes: “Basing the
unlimitedness of his power in Pravda Voli Monarshej on Hobbes’ theory,
and removing the bounds placed on this power by the Church, he changed the
basis of the power, placing it on the human base of a contract and thereby
subjecting it to all those waverings to which every human establishment is
subject; following Hobbes, he arbitrarily appropriated ecclesiastical power to
himself; through the ‘dechurchification’ of the institution of royal power the
latter lost its stability and the inviolability which is proper to an
ecclesiastical institution. It is only by this dechurchification that one can
explain the possibility of the demand for the abdication of the Tsar from his
throne without the participation of the Church in 1917. The beginning of this
ideological undermining of royal power was laid through the basing of the
unlimitedness of royal power in Pravda Voli Monarshej in accordance with
Hobbes, who in the last analysis confirmed it, not on the Divine call, but on
the sovereignty of the people…”[215]
The paradox that Petrine absolutism was
based on democracy is confirmed by L.A. Tikhomirov, who writes: “This Pravda
affirms that Russian subjects first had to conclude a contract amongst
themselves, and then the people ‘by its own will abdicated and gave it [power]
to the monarch.’ At this point it is explained that the sovereign can by law
command his people to do not only anything that is to his benefit, but also
simply anything that he wants. This interpretation of Russian monarchical power
entered, alas, as an official act into the complete collection of laws, where
it figures under No. 4888 in volume VII.
“…. In the Ecclesiastical Regulation
it is explained that ‘conciliar government is the most perfect and better than
one-man rule’ since, on the one hand, ‘truth is more certainly sought out by a
conciliar association than by one man’, and on the other hand, ‘a conciliar
sentence more strongly inclines towards assurance and obedience than one man’s
command’… Of course, Theophanes forced Peter to say all this to his subjects in
order to destroy the patriarchate, but these positions are advanced as a
general principle. If we were to believe these declarations, then the people
need only ask itself: why do I have to ‘renounce my own will’ if ‘conciliar
government is better than one-man rule and if ‘a conciliar sentence’ elicits
greater trust and obedience than one man’s command?
“It is evident that nothing of the sort
could have been written if there had been even the smallest clarity of
monarchical consciousness. Peter’s era in this respect constitutes a huge
regression by comparison with the Muscovite monarchy.”[216]
Thus did Peter the Great destroy the
traditional symphonic pattern of Church-State relations which had characterized
Russian history since the time of St. Vladimir. He broke it not simply by
individual acts of oppression, but systematically, by imposing his
Protestant-in-spirit Ecclesiastical Regulation on the Church, abolishing
the Patriarchate and forcing the members of the Synod to swear an oath to him a
“Supreme Judge” of their actions. Not until the reign of Nicholas II did the
Church regain something like her former freedom. As Karamzin put it, under
Peter “we became citizens of the world, but ceased to be, in some cases,
citizens of Russia. Peter was to blame.”[217]
Peter also destroyed – more accurately:
suspended - the idea of Russia as the Third Rome. “But not the idea of Rome,”
writes van den Bercken. “Rome remains an ideological point of reference in the
notion of the Russian state. However, it is no longer the second Rome but the
first Rome to which reference is made, or ancient Rome takes the place of
Orthodox Constantinople. Peter takes over Latin symbols: he replaces the title
tsar by the Latin imperator, designates his state imperia, calls
his advisory council senat, and makes the Latin Rossija the
official name of his land in place of the Slavic Rus’…
“Although the primary orientation is on
imperial Rome, there are also all kinds of references to the Christian Rome.
The name of the city, St. Petersburg, was not just chosen because Peter was the
patron saint of the tsar, but also to associate the apostle Peter with the new
Russian capital. That was both a diminution of the religious significance of
Moscow and a religious claim over papal Rome. The adoption of the religious
significance of Rome is also evident from the cult of the second apostle of
Rome, Paul, which is expressed in the name for the cathedral of the new
capital, the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral. This name was a break with the pious
Russian tradition, which does not regard the two Roman apostles but Andrew as
the patron of Russian Christianity. Thus St. Petersburg is meant to be the new
Rome, directly following on the old Rome, and passing over the second and third
Romes…”[218]
And yet the ideal of Russia as precisely
the Third Rome remained in the consciousness of the people. “The service
of ‘him that restraineth’, although undermined, was preserved by Russian
monarchical power even after Peter – and it is necessary to emphasize this. It
was preserved because neither the people nor the Church renounced the very
ideal of the Orthodox kingdom, and, as even V. Klyuchevsky noted, continued to
consider as law that which corresponded to this ideal, and not Peter’s
decrees.”[219]
Tsar
Peter and the Orthodox East
However, not only the Russian hierarchs,
but also the Eastern Patriarchs consented to Peter’s abolition of the
patriarchate. In September, 1721 Peter himself wrote to the Ecumenical
Patriarch asking for his formal recognition of the new form of ecclesiastical
administration in Russia – now more traditionally called a “Spiritual Synod”
rather than “Ecclesiastical College”, and endowed “with equal to patriarchal
power”.[220]
The reply came on September 23, 1723 in the form of “two nearly identical
letters, one from Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople, written on behalf of
himself and the patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandria, and the other from
Patriarch Athanasius of Antioch. Both letters ‘confirmed, ratified, and
declared’ that the Synod established by Peter ‘is, and shall be called, our
holy brother in Christ’; and the patriarchs enjoined all Orthodox clergy and
people to submit to the Synod ‘as to the four Apostolic thrones’.”[221]
If the submission of the Russian Church
and people to the new order is at least comprehensible in view of Peter’s iron
grip over his country, the agreement of the Eastern Patriarchs to this
abolition of the patriarchate they themselves had established needs some more
explaining.
The most important reason for the
hierarchs’ decision was undoubtedly the assurance they received from Peter that
he had instructed the Synod to rule the Russian Church “in accordance with the
unalterable dogmas of the faith of the Holy Orthodox Catholic Greek Church”. Of
course, if they had known all the Protestantising tendencies of Peter’s rule,
they might not have felt so assured…
Also relevant, very likely, was the fact
that the Russian tsar was the last independent Orthodox ruler and the main
financial support of the churches and monasteries of the East. This made it
very difficult for the Patriarchs to resist the Tsar in this, as in other
requests.[222]
Thus in 1716 Patriarch Jeremiah III acceded to Peter’s request to allow his
soldiers to eat meat during all fasts while they were on campaign[223];
and a little later he permitted the request of the Russian consul in
Constantinople that Lutherans and Calvinists should not be rebaptised on
joining the Orthodox Church.[224]
But a still more likely explanation is the
fact that the Eastern Patriarchs were themselves in an uncanonical situation in
relation to their secular ruler, the Sultan, which would have made any protest
against a similar uncanonicity in Russia seem hypocritical.
In order to understand this situation of
the Eastern Patriarchs, we need to go back to the fall of the Byzantine Empire
in 1453, and remind ourselves of the new relationship between Church and State
established by the Turkish sultan. “The Muslims,” as Bishop Kallistos Ware
writes, “drew no distinction between religion and politics: from their point of
view, if Christianity was to be recognized as an independent religious faith,
it was necessary for Christians to be organized as an independent political
unit, an Empire within the Empire. The Orthodox church therefore became a civil
as well as a religious institution: it was turned into the Rum millet,
the ‘Roman nation’. The ecclesiastical structure was taken over in toto
as an instrument of secular administration. The bishop became government officials,
the Patriarch was not only the spiritual head of the Greek Orthodox Church, but
the civil head of the Greek nation – the ethnarch or millet-bashi.”[225]
The millet system had the
consequence that “the Church’s higher administration became caught up in a
degrading system of corruption and simony. Involved as they were in worldly
affairs and matters political, the bishops fell a prey to ambition and
financial greed. Each new Patriarch required a berat from the Sultan
before he could assume office, and for this document he was obliged to pay
heavily. The Patriarch recovered his expenses from the episcopate, by exacting
a fee from each bishop before instituting him in his diocese; the bishops in
turn taxed the parish clergy, and the clergy taxed their flocks. What was once
said of the Papacy was certainly true of the Ecumenical Patriarchate under the
Turks: everything was for sale.
“When there were several candidates for
the Patriarchal throne, the Turks virtually sold it to the highest bidder; and
they were quick to see that it was in their financial interests to change the
Patriarch as frequently as possible, so as to multiply occasions for selling
the berat. Patriarchs were removed and reinstated with kaleidoscopic
rapidity.”[226]
Throughout the Orthodox world, in fact,
political conditions were forcing leading hierarchs into uncanonical
combinations of political and religious roles. Thus the Serbian Saint Maximus
(+1516) was both Despot of Srem and Archbishop of Wallachia.[227]
Again, in 1782 there emerged the prince-bishops of the Petrovic-Njegos family
in Montenegro.
Only little Georgia retained something
like the traditional symphony of powers. But even the Georgians were forced,
towards the end of the eighteenth century, to seek the suzerainty of Orthodox
Russia in the face of the Muslim threat: better an Orthodox absolutism than a
Muslim one.
Thus by the early eighteenth century we
have the tragic spectacle of the Orthodox Church almost everywhere in an
uncanonical position vis-à-vis the secular powers: in Russia, deprived
of its lawful head and ruled by a secular, albeit a formally Orthodox ruler; in
the Greek lands, under a lawful head, the Ecumenical Patriarch, who
nevertheless unlawfully combined political and religious roles and was chosen
by a Muslim ruler; and in the Balkans, deprived of their lawful heads (the
Serbian and Bulgarian patriarchs) and ruled in both political and religious
matters by the Ecumenical Patriarch while being under the supreme dominion of
the same Muslim ruler.
The problem was that there was no clear
way of getting out of this situation. Rebellion on a mass scale was out of the
question. So it was natural to look in hope to the north, where Peter, in spite
of his “state heresy” (Glubokovsky’s phrase), was an anointed sovereign who
greatly strengthened Russia militarily and signed all the confessions of the
faith of the Orthodox Church.
The hopes that the Balkan Orthodox placed
on the Russian empire were not unfounded. By the end of the century the
Ottomans had been defeated several times by the Russian armies, who controlled
the northern littoral of the Black Sea. And the threat posed by the Russian
navy to Constantinople itself translated into real influence with the Sultan,
which the Russian emperors and empresses used frequently in order to help their
co-religionists in the Balkans.
Military defeat created problems for the
Ottomans in more ways than one. As Philip Mansel points out, they “owed their
authority to military success. Unlike other Muslim dynasties such as the
Sherifs, the senior descendants of the Prophet who had ruled in Mecca and
Medina since the tenth century, they could not claim long-established right or
the blood of the Qureish, the Prophet’s tribe. This ‘legitimacy deficit’
created conflict, even in the mind of a sixteenth-century Grand Vizier like
Lutfi Pasha. Could the Ottoman Sultan be, as he frequently proclaimed, ‘Shadow
of God’?[228]
All these factors persuaded the Eastern
Patriarchs to employ “economy” and bless the absolutist form of government in
Russia. Nevertheless, every transgression of the sacred canons is regrettable.
And the transgression in this case was to have serious long-term consequences…
The
Verdict on Peter
In view of all that has been said about
the harmful effects of Peter’s reforms and the Protestantising tendencies of
his reign, we may wonder whether the Old Believers were not right in
considering him to be the Antichrist, or at least a heretic. There were some
people – and not only Old Believers - who thought that Peter the Great was
indeed a heretic, not only for his official policy towards the Church but also
because he often publicly mocked the rites of the Church in a blasphemous
fashion. Thus the layman Andrew Ivanov travelled 400 versts from
Nizhni-Novgorod province to tell the Tsar that he was a heretic and was
destroying the foundations of the Christian faith.[229]
Others went further. Thus as early as 1690
Gregory Talitsky circulated a pamphlet calling Moscow the New Babylon and Peter
the Antichrist, for which he was executed.[230]
And Monk Varlaam Levin from Penza was publicly executed in 1722 for calling
Peter the Antichrist. Yavorsky is said to have modified this judgement, saying
that Peter was “not the Antichrist, but an iconoclast” – which was a
contemporary Russian word for “Protestant”.[231]
And yet the consensus of the Church was
that Peter was not the Antichrist. Archbishop Nathaniel of Vienna asks why this
was the case. “Why, in the course of two centuries, have we all, both those who
are positively disposed and those who are negatively disposed towards Peter,
not consider him as the Antichrist? Why, next to the pious rebukers of Peter,
could there be pious, very pious venerators of him? Why could St. Metrophanes
of Voronezh, who fearlessly rebuked Peter’s comparatively innocent attraction
to Greek-Roman statues in imitation of the Europeans, nevertheless sincerely
and touchingly love the blasphemer-tsar and enjoy his love and respect in
return? Why could Saints Demetrius of Rostov and Innocent of Irkutsk love him
(the latter, as ‘over-hieromonk’ of the fleet, had close relations with him)?
Why did the most ardent and conscious contemporary opponent of Peter’s reforms,
the locum tenens of the Patriarchal Throne, Metropolitan Stefan
Yavorsky, who struggled with Peter’s anti-ecclesiastical reforms and was
persecuted and constrained by him for that, nevertheless not only not recognise
Peter as the Antichrist, but also wrote a book refuting such an opinion? Why in
general did the Church, which has always put forward from its midst holy
fighters against all antichristian phenomena contemporary to it, however much
these phenomena may have been supported by the bearers of supreme power, the
Church which later, under Catherine II, put forward against her far more
restrained, veiled and far less far-reaching anti-ecclesiastical reforms such
uncompromising fighters as Metropolitans Arsenius (Matseyevich) and Paul
(Konyuskevich) – why, under the Emperor Peter, did the Church not put forward
against him one holy man, recognised as such, not one rebuker authorised by
Her? Why did our best Church thinker, who understood the tragedy of the fall of
Holy Rus’ with the greatest clarity and fullness, A.S. Khomyakov, confess that
that in Peter’s reforms, “sensing in them the fruit of pride, the intoxication
of earthly wisdom, we have renounced all our holy things that our native to the
heart’, why could he nevertheless calmly and in a spirit of sober goodwill say
of Peter: ‘Many mistakes darken the glory of the Transformer of Russia, but to
him remains the glory of pushing her forward to strength and a consciousness of
her strength’?
“And finally, the most important question:
why is not only Russia, but the whole of the rest of the world, in which by
that time the terrible process of apostasy from God had already been taking
place for centuries, obliged precisely to Peter for the fact that this process
was stopped by the mighty hand of Russia for more than 200 years? After all,
when we rightly and with reason refer the words of the Apostle Paul: ‘The
mystery of lawlessness is already working, only it will not be completed until
he who now restrains is removed from the midst’ to the Russian tsars, we think
mainly of the Russian [St. Petersburg] emperors, and not of the Muscovite
tsars?[232] These
comparatively weak, exotic rulers, to whom the world outside their immediate
dominions related in approximately the way that, in later times, they related
to the Neguses and Negestas of Abyssinia, could not be the restrainers of the
world. Consequently Peter was simultaneously both the Antichrist and the
Restrainer from the Antichrist. But if that is the case, then the whole
exceptional nature of Peter’s spiritual standing disappears, because Christ and
Antichrist, God and the devil fight with each other in every human soul, for
every human soul, and in this case Peter turned out to be only more gifted than
the ordinary man, a historical personality who was both good and evil, but
always powerful, elementally strong. Both the enemies and the friends of Peter
will agree with this characterisation…”[233]
“All things work together for good for
those who love God” (Romans 8.28), and it is necessary to emphasise
that, through the mysterious Providence of God, even Petrine absolutism worked
in some ways for the good of the Orthodox Christian People.
Thus L.A. Tikhomirov wrote at the turn of
the twentieth century: “It would be superfluous to repeat that in his
fundamental task Peter the Great was without question right and was a great
Russian man. He understood that as a monarch, as the bearer of the duties of
the tsar, he was obliged dauntlessly to take upon his shoulders a heavy task:
that of leading Russia as quickly as possible to as a complete as possible a
mastery of all the means of European culture. For Russia this was a ‘to be or
not be’ question. It is terrible even to think what would have been the case if
we had not caught up with Europe before the end of the 18th century.
Under the Petrine reforms we fell into a slavery to foreigners which has lasted
to the present day, but without this reform, of course, we would have lost our
national existence if we had lived in our barbaric powerlessness until the time
of Fredrick the Great, the French Revolution and the era of Europe’s economic
conquest of the whole world. With an iron hand Peter forced Russia to learn and
work – he was, of course, the saviour of the whole future of the nation.
“Peter was also right in his coercive
measures. In general Russia had for a long time been striving for science, but
with insufficient ardour. Moreover, she was so backward, such terrible labour
was set before her in order to catch up with Europe, that the whole nation
could not have done it voluntarily. Peter was undoubtedly right, and
deserved the eternal gratitude of the fatherland for using the whole of his
royal authority and power to create the cruellest dictatorship and move the
country forward by force, enslaving the whole nation, because of the
weakness of her resources, to serve the aims of the state. There was no other
way to save Russia.[234]
“But Peter was right only for himself, for
his time and for his work. But when this system of enslaving the people to the
state is elevated into a principle, it becomes murderous for the nation, it
destroys all the sources of the people’s independent life. But Peter indicated
no limits to the general enserfment to the state, he undertook no measures to
ensure that a temporary system should not become permanent, he even took no
measures to ensure that enserfed Russia did not fall into the hands of
foreigners, as happened immediately after his death.”[235]
But while
it may be argued that Peter’s enslavement of the nation in the political and
economic spheres was necessary for its survival, can the same be said for his
destruction of its system of Church-State relations? Hardly, for the Orthodox
symphonic system of Church-State relations is established by God and cannot be
changed without incurring the wrath of God. And yet even here we see the
mysterious Providence of God at work. For while symphony of powers is
undoubtedly the best model of Church-State relations for an Orthodox nation,
there are times when the People are too weak or too divided in faith to sustain
such a symphony in its pure form (for the symphony is actually a three-sided
relationship between Church, State and People). In these conditions a harsh,
caesaropapist Tsar, while undesirable and harmful as such, has at least this
advantage, that it humbles the Church and People, reminding them how far they
have fallen since the time when they were counted worthy of a merciful Tsar.
Such a time came for the Russian people,
as we have seen, shortly after the middle of the seventeenth century, as it had
come earlier, in the fifteenth century, for the Orthodox of the Balkans and the
Middle East. One part of the people, the Old Believers, rejected both Church
and State and became, in effect, a revolutionary underground movement. The rest
of the people, while remaining Orthodox, began to be penetrated by elements of
western heresy. As for the Church, it failed to support its lawful patriarch,
Nicon, and allowed itself to be led by the crypto-papist Ligarides to condemn
him and cast him into exile. Into the vacuum left by the weakness of the Church
hierarchy stepped the State – and not without the blessing of the Church, which
eagerly entrusted the State with the extirpation of heresy and schism that was
her own primary responsibility. But the State can only restrain heresy, not
extirpate it. Its methods and tools are crude and physical - the knout and the
chain and the bonfire. But the illness of the mind and heart that is heresy can
be healed only by the more spiritual methods of education and persuasion by
example, by holiness of life, which the Church alone can nourish. The matter
was made worse by the fact that Tsarevna Sophia’s suppression of the Old
Believers was carried out under the influence of her favourite, Prince
Golitsyn, who, according to Ivanov, “was undoubtedly a Catholic”.[236]
This obviously did not dispose the Old Believers to think that they were being
punished by a lawful, Orthodox authority…
And so by the just judgement of God the
Church was deprived of the patriarchate and found itself powerless to defend
itself against the depradations of the secular power.[237]
And yet, as Nikolin writes: “This reform was not directed against the
foundations of Orthodoxy. All the transformations carried through by the State
power concerned the ecclesiastical canons, but did not touch the dogmatic
teaching. Moreover, the supreme power made the confession of the Orthodox faith
an inalienable condition of the occupation of the Russian throne, and the
emperor was declared to be the supreme defender and preserver of the dogmas of
the dominant faith and ‘the overseer of right faith and every holy order in the
Church’”.[238]
So Peter was not the Antichrist: he did
great harm to the Church, but at the same time he was the instrument of God’s
righteous chastisement of her. Moreover, as long as the State remained formally
Orthodox, there was hope – hope not only that the elements of heterodoxy could
be checked, if not extirpated, but also that the Church could begin to recover
her strength under the aegis of the Orthodox Emperors and again take the lead
in the spiritual regeneration of the nation. That hope began to be fulfilled
during the reign of Tsar Nicolas II, who removed the hierarchical oath of
submission to the emperor as the “Supreme Judge” of the Church, and was brought
to fruition during the Local Council of the Russian Church in 1917-18, when the
patriarchate was restored and the Church, deprived now of any secular support,
prepared to encounter a real Antichrist, the collective Antichrist of Soviet power…
As for Peter himself, we may conclude that
while he greatly harmed the Russian Church, and some of his ideas were
heretical, he remained a member of the Church insofar as the conscience of the
Church has refused to condemn him as a heretic. Thus Cracraft’s summary is
eminently fair: “A contemporary Anglican observer conjectured that, had Peter
lived longer, he might have ‘further advanc’d reformation of doctrines in his
country’. With all due respect to the Reverend Consett, and in consideration of
the abundant evidence concerning Peter’s church reform that we have at our
disposal, we may state with assurance that it was never Peter’s intention to
embark on a ‘reformation of doctrines’ in Russia. For Peter’s reform… consisted
essentially of a radical reorganization of the supreme administration of the
church to which was coupled a campaign to banish superstitious practices and to
raise the moral standards of clergy and people through improved standards of
education. To be sure, in thus reforming the church Peter destroyed its
administrative autonomy (which raised certain canonical problems) and abolished
or sharply curtailed the clergy’s economic and judicial privileges. He also
made use of the church for propaganda purposes. He attempted to enlist the
clergy’s services in the suppression of opposition to his regime. At one point
he even ordained that, in the interests of state security, the clergy should
violate the secrecy of confession. But the dogmas or basic tenets of the
Orthodox faith, as embodied in the doctrinal definitions of the ecumenical
councils, in the teachings of the Fathers, and in the various doctrinal
statements formulated up to Peter's time, were never explicitly questioned or
repudiated, in whole or in part, by Peter or his chief clerical and lay
collaborators. Except for deleting the patriarchal commemoration, the services
of the church were in no way altered. Communion with the Orthodox churches of
the East was carefully preserved. In short, there is absolutely no evidence
that Peter ever intended to forsake the faith of his fathers (however
imperfectly he understood it); and the charges or claims to this effect
advanced by Orthodox or Catholics or Protestants are the outcome either of
misunderstanding or of wishful thinking or of both. So far as Peter was
concerned he remained, as he himself declared in a letter of September 1721 to
the Eastern patriarchs, ‘a devoted son of our Most Beloved Mother the Orthodox
Church’.”[239]
And what of Peter’s membership of Masonry? Ivanov
writes: “Masonry is a two-faced Janus: on the one side – brotherhood, love,
charity and the good of the people; on the other – atheism and cosmopolitanism,
despotism and violence.
“Peter,
like all [?] the kings and tsars, was drawn to Masonry by the loftiness of the
aims preached by the order.
“War, the
long, stubborn, feverish task of building up the state, and heavy and intense
labour, deprived Peter of the opportunity of searching beneath the fine
spider’s web which the foreign masons wove around it, forcing him to become a
weapon of the destruction of the faith, morals and spirit of his people. And
yet Masonry proved powerless finally to enslave the Russian soul of the Russian
tsar. Peter may have wandered amidst the wilds of Protestantism, he may have
blasphemed, he may have done evil to his mother the Church, but he died as an
Orthodox. He died as a faithful and godly son of the Orthodox Church.
“From
January 23 to 28 he confessed and received communion three times; while
receiving holy unction, he displayed great compunction of soul and several
times repeated: ‘I believe, I hope!’
“Crowned with general recognition and
worldly glory, Peter was not proud of his perceived greatness and died with
deep humility and repentance.
“He did
that which to this day the progressive intelligentsia has not wanted to do,
that is, repent and humble themselves.
“Peter was
great because he died with faith and hope in the mercy of God, with faith in
the saving power of Orthodoxy and in his death he displayed the best traits of
the truly Orthodox person – humility and a bowing down before the will of God.
“Peter departed to the eternal world as an
Orthodox Russian Tsar, and it is in this that the greatness and immortality of
his name consists.”[240]
And from that eternal world his old friend
and foe, St. Metrophanes, once appeared to one of his venerators and said: “If
you want to be pleasing to me, pray for the peace of the soul of the Emperor
Peter the Great...”[241]
Anna:
the German Persecution of Orthodoxy
Before his death Peter had instituted a
new method of determining the succession to the throne: abolishing
primogeniture, which he called “a bad custom”, he decreed “that it should
always be in the will of the ruling sovereign to give the inheritance to
whomever he wishes”.[242]
This retrograde step led to a situation in
which, in sharp contrast to the relative stability of succession under the
Muscovite tsars, every single change of monarch from the death of Peter I in
1725 to the assassination of Paul I in 1801 was a violent coup d’état
involving the intervention of the Guards regiments and their aristocratic
protégés. The result was perhaps the lowest nadir of Russian
statehood, when the state was governed by children or women under the control
of a Masonic aristocratic élite whose own support did not rest on the
people but on the army. This showed that the tsars, far from strengthening
their power by the suppression of the Church, had actually weakened it, and that
in the end their power rested on might – the might of the armed forces.
Moreover, not only was the nationality of the Emperors and Empresses mainly
German, but the whole culture of their court was predominantly Franco-German,
and most education in ecclesiastical schools was conducted in Latin, which
showed that in Russia, unlike Western Europe, the Enlightenment was not simply
a development of native culture, but rather an imposition of a
foreign culture on the native one.
No sooner was Peter dead than thoughts
about the restoration of the patriarchate re-surfaced. “The very fact of his
premature death,” writes Zyzykin, “was seen as the punishment of God for his
assumption of ecclesiastical power. ‘There you are,’ said Archbishop Theodosius
of Novgorod in the Synod, ‘he had only to touch spiritual matters and
possessions and God took him.’ From the incautious words of Archbishop
Theodosius, Theophanes [Prokopovich] made a case for his having created a
rebellion, and he was arrested on April 27 [1725], condemned on September 11,
1725 and died in 1726. Archbishop Theophylactus of Tver was also imprisoned in
1736 on a charge of wanting to become Patriarch. On December 31, 1740 he again
received the insignia of hierarchical rank and died on May 6, 1741. For propagandising
the idea of the patriarchate Archimandrite Marcellus Rodyshevsky was imprisoned
in 1732, was later forgiven, and died as a Bishop in 1742.[243]
Also among the opponents of Peter’s Church reform was Bishop George Dashkov of
Rostov, who was put forward in the time of Peter I as a candidate for
Patriarch… After the death of Peter, in 1726, he was made the third hierarch in
the Synod by Catherine I. On July 21, 1730, by a decree of the Empress Anna,
he, together with Theophylactus, was removed from the Synod, and on November 19
of the same year, by an order of the Empress Anna he was imprisoned, and in
February, 1731 took the schema. He was imprisoned in the Spasokamenny monastery
on an island in Kubensk lake, and in 1734 was sent to Nerchinsk monastery – it
was forbidden to receive any declaration whatsoever from him… Thus concerning
the time of the Empress Anna a historian writes what is easy for us to imagine
since Soviet power, but was difficult for a historian living in the 19th
century: ‘Even from a distance of one and a half centuries, it is terrible to
imagine that awful, black and heavy time with its interrogations and
confrontations, with their iron chains and tortures. A man has committed no
crime, but suddenly he is seized, shackled and taken to St. Petersburg or
Moscow - he knows not where, or what for. A year or two before he had spoken
with some suspicious person. What they were talking about – that was the reason
for all those alarms, horrors and tortures. Without the least exaggeration we can
say about that time that on lying down to sleep at night you could not vouch
for yourself that by the morning that you would not be in chains, and that from
the morning to the night you would not land up in a fortress, although you
would not be conscious of any guilt. The guilt of all these clergy consisted
only in their desire to restore the canonical form of administration of the
Russian Church and their non-approval of Peter’s Church reform, which did not
correspond to the views of the people brought up in Orthodoxy.’[244]
“But even under Anna the thought of the
patriarchate did not go away, and its supporters put forward Archimandrite
Barlaam, the empress’ spiritual father, for the position of Patriarch. We shall
not name the many others who suffered from the lower ranks; we shall only say
that the main persecutions dated to the time of the Empress Anna, when the
impulse given by Peter to Church reform produced its natural result, the direct
persecution of Orthodoxy. But after the death of Theophanes in 1736 Bishop
Ambrose Yushkevich of Vologda, a defender of the patriarchate and of the views
of Marcellus Rodyshevsky, became the first member of the Synod. With the
enthronement of Elizabeth he greeted Russia on her deliverance from her
internal hidden enemies who were destroying Orthodoxy. Chistovich writes: ‘The
Synod remembered its sufferers under Elizabeth; a true resurrection from the
dead took place. Hundreds, thousands of people who had disappeared without
trace and had been taken for dead came to life again. After the death of the
Empress Anna the released sufferers dragged themselves back to their homeland,
or the places of their former service, from all the distant corners of Siberia
– some with torn out nostrils, others with their tongue cut out, others with
legs worn through by chains, others with broken spines or arms disfigured from
tortures.’ The Church preachers under Elizabeth attributed this to the hatred
for the Russian faith and the Russian people of Biron, Osterman, Minikh,
Levenvold and other Lutheran Germans who tried to destroy the very root of
eastern piety. They were of this opinion because most of all there suffered the
clergy – hierarchs, priests and monks…”[245]
"In
Biron's time,” writes Andrew Bessmertny, “hundreds of clergy were tonsured,
whipped and exiled, and they did the same with protesting bishops - and there
were quite a few of those. 6557 priests were forced into military service, as a
consequence of which in only four northern dioceses 182 churches remained
without clergy or readers." [246]
Here we see the first – and by no means
the last – evil consequence of the anticanonical yoke imposed upon the Church
by Peter the Great.
“This is what happened in Russia,” writes
Zyzykin, “when the State secularisation which had begun under Alexis
Mikhailovich led to the dominion of the State over the Church, while the
authority in the State itself was in the hands of genuine Protestants, who did
not occupy secondary posts, as under Peter, but were in leading posts, as under
the Empress Anna. The ideology of royal power laid down under Peter remained
throughout the period of the Emperors; the position of the Church in the State
changed in various reigns, but always under the influence of those ideas which
the secular power itself accepted; it was not defined by the always unchanging
teaching of the Orthodox Church”[247]
– the symphony of powers.
How did the hierarchs themselves remember
Biron’s time? Bishop Ambrose wrote: “They attacked our Orthodox piety and
faith, but in such a way and under such a pretext that they seemed to be
rooting out some unneeded and harmful superstition in Christianity. O how many
clergymen and an even greater number of learned monks were defrocked, tortured
and exterminated under that pretense! Why? No answer is heard except: he is a
superstitious person, a bigot, a hypocrite, a person unfit for anything. These
things were done cunningly and purposefully, so as to extirpate the Orthodox
priesthood and replace it with a newly conceived priestlessness [bezpopovshchina]…
“Our domestic enemies devised a strategem
to undermine the Orthodox faith; they consigned to oblivion religious books
already prepared for publication [like Stefan Yavorsky’s Rock of Faith];
and they forbade others to be written under penalty of death. They seized not
only the teachers, but also their lessons and books, fettered them, and locked
them in prison. Things reached such a point that in this Orthodox state to open
one’s mouth about religion was dangerous: one could depend on immediate trouble
and persecution.”[248]
Biron’s was a time, recalled Metropolitan
Demetrius (Sechenov) of Novgorod in his sermon on the feast of the
Annunciation, 1742, “when our enemies so raised their heads that they dared to
defile the dogma of the holy faith, the Christian dogmas, on which eternal
salvation depends. They did not call on the aid of the intercessor of our
salvation, nor beseech her defence; they did not venerate the saints of God;
they did not bow to the holy icons; they mocked the sign of the holy cross;
they rejected the traditions of the apostles and holy fathers; they cast out
good works, which attract eternal reward; they ate eat during the holy fasts,
and did not want even to hear about mortifying the flesh; they laughed at the
commemoration of the reposed; they did not believe in the existence of
gehenna.”[249]
“This
great destructive work,” comments Ivanov, “ was carried out by the leading
people in the country – Prokopovich, Tatishchev and Kantemir…
“There is
no direct historical data to answer the question whether Theophanes
[Prokopovich], Kantemir and Tatishchev formally belong to Masonry, that is,
were members of Masonic lodges. But this has no significance, for they were all
undoubtedly in the power of the destructive ideas of Masonry.
“There is
no doubt that during the reign of Anna Ioannovna Masonry pushed down deep roots
in Russia.
“In 1731
John Philipps was appointed great provincial master for Russia. After him there
appears the notable James Cate.
“’Cate,’
writes Vernadsky, ‘was the representative of a family that united through its
activity three countries – Russia, Scotland and Prussia. James Cate himself
fled from England, and after the unsuccessful outcome of the Jacobite rebellion
(in which Cate himself took part on the side of the Stuart pretender) in 1728
he became a Russian general. In about 1747 he moved to the service of Prussia;
he then took part in the seven-year war on the side of Prussia and in 1758 was
killed in the battle of Gochrichen.
“’His
brother John Cate (Lord Kintor) was the grand master of English Masonry; George
Cate was the well-known general of Frederick II (and sentenced to death in
England for helping the same Stuart). Finally, there was also a Robert Cate who
was English ambassador in St. Petersburg (a little later, from 1758 to 1762).’
“… The
name of James Cate was greatly respected by Russian Masons… This father and
benefactor of the Russian Masons was none other than the spy and emissary of
Frederick II, an ardent Mason, called Great for his hatred for Christianity.
“’In
Germany itself,’ writes Pypin, ‘Masonry had already acquired very many
followers by 1730, and there are reasons to believe that during the time of
Anna and Biron the Germans had Masonic lodges in St. Petersburg. Concerning
Cate himself there is evidence that he had some kind of contacts with the
German lodges even before he became grand master in Russia.’
“… Foreigners were in charge of all the affairs of the
Empire. The ruler of the state was a foreigner, the first cabinet minister was
a foreigner, two army field-marshals were foreigners. All the more or less
significant posts in the army and administration were occupied by foreigners.
Prominent Russian nobles, on the other hand, were in disgrace and exile.
“The discontent was general. But,
suppressed by fear and terror, the Russians could only express their sorrow at
their insults and injury to themselves…”[250]
Elizabeth,
Masonry and Frederick the Great
By the mercy
of God, the Empress Anna died, and although Biron was appointed regent the next
day, the Germans fell out amongst themselves. So in 1741, after the brief reign
of Ivan VI, the daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth, who was both Russian
and truly Orthodox, came to the throne. The Orthodox bishops returned from
prison and exile, and the country breathed a sigh of relief.
Very soon Elizabeth restored to the Church some of its former privileges. Thus in 1742, writes Rusak, “the initial judgement on clergy was presented to the Synod, even with regard to political matters. The Synod was re-established in its former dignity, as the highest ecclesiastical institution with the title ‘Ruling’.
“The members of the Synod (Archbishop
Ambrose Yushkevich of Novgorod, Metropolitan Arsenius Matseyevich of Rostov,
both Ukrainians) gave a report to the empress in which they wrote that if it
was not pleasing to her to restore the patriarchate, then let her at least give
the Synod a president and body composed only of hierarchs. In addition, they
petitioned for the removal of the post of over-procurator. The empress did not
go to the lengths of such serious reforms, but she did agree to return to the
clergy its property and submit the College of Economics to the Synod.”[251]
However, writes Nikolin, “there was a
significant rise in the significance of the over-procurator, whose post was
re-established (during the reign of Anna Ivanovna it had been suspended).
Prince Ya.P. Shakhovskoj, who was appointed to the post, was given the right to
give daily personal reports to the empress, who entrusted him personally with
receiving from her all the ukazes and oral directives for the Synodal
administration. Thereby, however, there arose a very ambiguous state of
affairs. On the one hand, the Synod’s affairs were being reported directly to
the supreme power, but on the other the idea of the State’s interest, and its
priority over the ecclesiastical interest, was being constantly emphasised. The
strengthening of the over-procurator’s power was aided by an ukaz of the
empress introducing a new system of Church administration in the dioceses – the
consistories. In these institutions a leading role was acquired by the
secretaries, who were appointed by the over-procurator, controlled by him and
accountable to him. However, the noticeable tendency evident in these years
towards a strengthening of the over-procurator’s executive power in the Church
was restrained by the personal goodwill of the empress towards the clergy.”[252]
“On
Elizabeth’s accession to the throne,” continues Ivanov, “a popular movement
appeared, directed against foreigners, which established itself in the two
following reigns. The lower classes were waiting for the expulsion of the
foreigners from Russia. But nothing, except some street brawls with foreigners,
took place.
“A
reaction began against the domination of the foreigners who despised everything
Russia, together with a weak turn towards a national regime…
“During
the 20 years of Elizabeth’s reign Russia relaxed after her former oppression,
and the Russian Church came to know peaceful days…
“The
persecution of the Orthodox Church begun under Peter I and continued under Anna
Ivanovna began to weaken somewhat, and the clergy raised their voices…
“Under
Elizabeth there began a raising to the hierarchical rank of Great Russian
monks, while earlier the hierarchs had been mainly appointed from the Little
Russians…
“Under
Elizabeth the Protestants who remained at court did not begin to speak against
Orthodoxy, whereas in the reign of Anna Ivanovna they had openly persecuted it.
Nevertheless, Protestantism as a weapon of the Masons in their struggle with
Orthodoxy had acquired a sufficiently strong position in the previous reigns.
The soil had been prepared, the minds of society were inclined to accept the
Freemasons.
“’In the reign of Elizabeth German
influence began to be replaced by French,” an investigator of this question
tells us. ‘At this time the West European intelligentsia was beginning to be
interested in so-called French philosophy; even governments were beginning to
be ruled by its ideas… In Russia, as in Western Europe, a fashion for this
philosophy appeared. In the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna a whole generation of its
venerators was already being reared. They included such highly placed people as
Count M. Vorontsov and Shuvalov, Princess Dashkova and the wife of the heir to
the throne, Catherine Alexeyevna. But neither Elizabeth nor Peter III
sympathised with it.
“Individual Masons from Peter’s time were
organising themselves. Masonry was developing strongly…”[253]
Nevertheless, “in society people began to be suspicious of Masonry.
Masons in society acquired the reputation of being heretics and apostates… Most
of Elizabethan society considered Masonry to be an atheistic and criminal
matter…
“The Orthodox clergy had also been hostile
to Masonry for a long time already. Preachers at the court began to reprove
‘animal-like and godless atheists’ and people ‘of Epicurean and Freemasonic
morals and mentality’ in their sermons. The sermons of Gideon Antonsky, Cyril
Florinsky, Arsenius Matseyevich, Cyril Lyashevetsky, Gideon Krinovsky and
others reflected the struggle that was taking place between the defenders of Orthodoxy
and their enemies, the Masons.”[254]
Masonry
was particularly strong in the university and among the cadets.
“The cadet
corps was the laboratory of the future revolution. From the cadet corps there
came the representatives of Russian progressive literature, which was
penetrated with Masonic ideals….
“Towards
the end of the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna Masonry openly revealed its real
nature. At this time a bitter struggle was developing in the West between
Austria and Prussia for the Austrian succession. In 1756 there began the
Seven-Year war, in which Russia took an active part.
“The Mason
Frederick II was again striving to subject Russia to his influence.
“This aim
was to be attained completely by means of the defeat of the Russian army and
her capitulation before the ‘genius’ commander.
“And one
has to say that everything promised victory for Frederick II over the Russian
army.
“He had a
very well trained, armed and provisioned army with talented officers.
“Frederick was undoubtedly helped by the Masons – Germans who had taken
high administrative and military posts in Russia.
“The noted
James Cate, the great provincial master for the whole of Russia, was a
field-marshal of the Russian army, but in fact carried out the role of
Frederick’s spy; in 1747 he fled [Russian] to serve him and was killed in
battle for his adored and lofty brother.
“In
general the Russian army was teeming with Prussian spies and Russian
Mason-traitors.
“The Russian army was deliberately not
prepared…
“And at
the head of the Russian army the Masons placed Apraxin, who gave no orders,
displayed an unforgivable slowness and finally entered upon the path of open
betrayal.
“The
victory at Gross-Egersford was won exclusively thanks to the courage and
bravery of the Russian soldiers, and was not used as it should have been by the
Russian commander-in-chief. Apraxin had every opportunity to cross conquered
Prussia, extend a hand to the Swedes in Pomerania and appear before the walls
of Berlin. But instead of moving forward he stopped at Tilsit and refused to
use the position that was favourable for the Russian army… Apraxin was only
fulfilling his duty of a Mason, which obliged him to deliver his lofty brother,
Frederick II, from his woes…
“But this
was not the only help extended to Prussia by the Russian Masons. In 1758,
instead of Apraxin, who was placed on trial, Fermor was appointed as
commander-in-chief. He was an active Mason and a supporter of Frederick II.
Fermor acted just like Apraxin. He displayed stunning inactivity and slowness.
At the battle of Tsorndof the commander-in-chief Fermor hid from the field of
battle. Deserted and betrayed by their commander-in-chief the Russian army did
not panic…
“With the greatest equanimity the soldiers
did not think of fleeing or surrendering…
“Frederick
II had everything on his side: complete gun crews, discipline, superior
weapons, the treachery of the Russian commander-in-chief. But he did not have enough
faith and honour, which constituted the strength and glory of the Christ-loving
Russian Army.
“The help
of the dark powers was again required: and the Russian Masons for the third
time gave help to Frederick II.
“At first
it was suggested that Fermor be replaced by Buturlin, whom Esterhazy quite
justly called ‘an idiot’, but when this did not happen, they appointed Peter
Saltykov to the post of commander-in-chief. The soldiers called him ‘moor-hen’
and openly accused him of treachery. At Könersdorf the Russian commanders
displayed complete incompetence. The left wing of the Russian army under the
command of Golitsyn was crushed. At two o’clock Frederick was the master of
Mulberg, one of the three heights where Saltykov had dug in. By three o’clock
the victory was Frederick’s. And once again the situation was saved by the
Russian soldiers. The king led his army onto the attack three times, and three
times he retreated, ravaged by the Russian batteries. ‘Scoundrels’, ‘swine’,
‘rascals’ was what Frederick called his soldiers, unable to conquer the Russian
soldiers who died kissing their weapons.
“’One can
overcome all of them (the Russian soldiers) to the last man, but not conquer
them,’ Frederick II had to admit after his defeat.
“The
victory remained with the Russian soldiers, strong in the Orthodox faith and
devotion to the autocracy….
“The unexpected death of Elizabeth
Petrovna on December 24, 1761 at the height of her powers and health saved
Frederick II from inevitable ruin.”[255]
Unfortunately, it also brought to an end the recovery of Orthodoxy that
had taken place under Elizabeth…
Catherine the Great
Elizabeth’s successor, Peter III, brought
the war to an end and on February 18, 1762 issued a manifesto giving freedom
from obligatory state service to the nobility. Although this was, not
unnaturally, applauded by the nobles, within a few months, on June 28, 1762,
they staged a coup which led to the death of the Tsar, who, although he was
also probably a Mason, was only “superficially” so according to Ivanov.[256]
His wife, Catherine, a German, appears to have cooperated with the coup that
brought her to the throne, a coup that was organised by the Masons Panin and
Gregory Orlov…
Pipes
writes: “It has been said that under Peter [I] Russia learned western
techniques, under Elizabeth western manners, and under Catherine western
morals. Westernization certainly made giant progress in the eighteenth century;
what had begun as mere aping of the west by the court and its élite
developed into close identification with the very spirit of western culture.
With the advance of westernization it became embarrassing for the state and the
dvorianstvo [nobility and civil servants] to maintain the old service
structure. The dvorianstvo wished to emulate the western aristocracy, to enjoy
its status and rights; and the Russian monarchy, eager to find itself in the
forefront of European enlightenment, was, up to a point, cooperative.
“In the course of the eighteenth century a
consensus developed between the crown and the dvorianstvo that the old
system had outlived itself. It is in this atmosphere that the social, economic
and ideological props of the patrimonial regime were removed….
“Dvoriane serving in the military
were the first to benefit from the general weakening of the monarchy that
occurred after Peter’s death. In 1730, provincial dvoriane frustrated a
move by several boyar families to impose constitutional limitations on the
newly elected Empress Anne. In appreciation, Anne steadily eased the conditions
of service which Peter had imposed on the dvorianstvo…
“These measures culminated in the
Manifesto ‘Concerning the Granting of Freedom and Liberty to the Entire Russian
Dvorianstvo’, issued in 1762 by Peter III, which ‘for ever, for all
future generations’ exempted Russian dvoriane from state service in all its
forms. The Manifesto further granted them the right to obtain passports for
travel abroad, even if their purpose was to enroll in the service of foreign
rulers – an unexpected restoration of the ancient boyar right of ‘free
departure’ abolished by Ivan III. Under Catherine II, the Senate on at least
three occasions confirmed this Manifesto, concurrently extending to the
dvorianstvo other rights and privileges (e.g. the right, given in 1783, to
maintain private printing presses). In 1785 Catherine issued a Charter of the Dvorianstvo
which reconfirmed all the liberties acquired by this estate since Peter’s
death, and added some new ones. The land which the dvoriane held was now
recognized as their legal property. They were exempt from corporal punishment.
These rights made them – on paper, at any rate – the equals of the upper
classes in the most advanced countries of the west.”[257]
Catherine also gave the nobles more power
over their serfs, the right to trade, freedom from corporal punishment and the
right to organize local associations which would elect local government
officials. All this would seem to indicate the influence on Catherine of her reading
of Montesquieu and Diderot. Thus Montesquieu had argued for the creation of
aristocratic “intermediate institutions” between the king and the people –
institutions such as the parlements and Estates General in France. He
believed that “no monarch, no nobility, no nobility, no monarch.”[258]
However, Montesquieu’s aim had been that these institutions and the nobility
should check the power of the king. Catherine, on the other hand, was
attempting to buttress her power by buying the support of the nobles.[259]
But if the sovereign and the nobility were
coming closer together, this only emphasized the gulf between this westernized
élite and the masses of the Russian people. The serfs received nothing,
although they constituted the material and spiritual foundation of the empire.
As for the Church, Catherine went even
further than Peter in expropriating ecclesiastical and monastic lands. Already
between 1762 and 1764 the number of monasteries was reduced from 1072 to 452,
and of monastics – from 12,444 to 5105! At the same time the power of the
Church courts was reduced; out of fear of “fanaticism”, they were deprived of
the right to review cases concerning blasphemy, disruptions of services, magic
and superstition.[260]
Catherine called herself head of the Greek
Church in her correspondence with the Austrian Emperor Joseph II.[261]
And she was no fan of the traditionally Orthodox “symphonic” model of
Church-State relations. “[The Archbishop
of Novgorod],” she wrote to Voltaire, “is neither a persecutor nor a fanatic.
He abhors the idea of the two powers”.[262]
“The first
over-procurator in the reign of Catherine II,” writes Rusak, “was Prince A.
Kozlovsky, who was not particularly distinguished in anything, but under whom
the secularisation of the Church lands took place.
“His two
successors, according to the definition of Kartashev, were ‘bearers of the most
modern, anti-clerical, enlightenment ideology’. In 1765 there followed the
appointment of I. Melissino as over-procurator. His world-view was very vividly
reflected in his ‘Points’ – a project for an order to the Synod. Among others
were the following points:
“3)… to weaken and shorten the fasts…
“5)… to
purify the Church from superstitions and ‘artificial’ miracles and superstitions
concerning relics and icons: for the study of this problem, to appoint a
special commission from various unblended-by-prejudices people;
“7) to
remove something from the long Church rites; so as to avoid pagan much speaking
in prayer, to remove the multitude of verses, canons, troparia, etc., that have
been composed in recent times, to remove many unnecessary feast days, and to
appoint short prayer-services with useful instructions to the people instead of
Vespers and All-Night Vigils…
“10) to allow the clergy to wear more fitting clothing;
“11) would
it not be more rational completely to remove the habit of commemorating the
dead (such a habit only provides the clergy with an extra excuse for various
kinds of extortions)…
“In other
points married bishops, making divorces easier, etc., were suggested.
“As
successor to Melessino there was appointed Chebyshev, a Mason, who openly
proclaimed his atheism. He forbade the printing of works in which the existence
of God was demonstrated. ‘There is no God!’ he said aloud more than once.
Besides, he was suspected, and not without reason, of spending large sums of
Synodal money.
“In 1774
he was sacked. In his place there was appointed the pious S. Akchurin, then A.
Naumov. Both of them established good relations with the members of the Synod.
The last over-procurator in the reign of Catherine II was the active Count A.
Musin-Pushkin, the well-known archaeologist, a member of the Academy of
Sciences, who later revealed the “Word on Igor’s Regiment’. He took into his
hands the whole of the Synodal Chancellery. Being a Church person, he did not
hinder the members of the Synod from making personal reports to the empress and
receive orders directly from her.
“Out of fear of ‘fanaticism’, in the reign
of Catherine II cases dealing with religious blasphemies, the violation of
order in Divine services, and magic and superstition were removed from the
competence of the spiritual court…”[263]
The growth in the power of the bureaucracy
was making the sovereign increasingly isolated from the ordinary people and
increasingly unable to exert direct control over the conduct of government. The
Muscovite tsars had created a Chelobitnij Prikaz which enabled the
ordinary people to bring their complaints directly to the tsar. Even Peter,
who, as we have seen, created the beginnings of a powerful bureaucracy, had
retained sufficient control over the bureaucrats to ensure that he was not cut
off from the people and remained the real ruler of the country.
“But after his death, as L.A. Tikhomirov
explained, “the supreme power was cut off from the people, and at the same time
was penetrated by a European spirit of absolutism. This latter circumstance was
aided by the fact that the bearers of supreme power were themselves not of
Russian origin during this period, and the education of everyone in general was
not Russian. [This] imitation of administrative creativity continued throughout
the eighteenth century.”[264]
Few were those who, in this nadir of
Russian statehood and spirituality, had the courage to expose the vices of
Russian society while proposing solutions in the spirit of a truly Orthodox
piety. One of the few was St. Tikhon, Bishop of Zadonsk. He both rebuked tsars
and nobles for their profligate lives and injustice to their serfs; and
criticized the western education they were giving their children: “God will not
ask you whether you taught your children French, German or Italian or the
politics of society life – but you will not escape Divine reprobation for not
having instilled goodness into them. I speak plainly but I tell the truth: if
your children are bad, your grandchildren will be worse… and the evil will thus
increase… and the root of all this is our thoroughly bad education…”[265]
Another righteous accuser was Metropolitan Arsenius (Matseyevich) of
Rostov, who rejected Catherine’s expropriation of the monasteries in 1763-1764
and refused to swear an oath of allegiance to her as head of the Church. For
this he was defrocked and exiled to a monastery in Karelia. But since there he
continued to speak against the government’s policy in relation to the Church,
he was deprived of his monasticism and imprisoned in Revel fortress, where he
died in 1772, after accurately prophesying the fates of those bishops who
acquiesced in his unjust sentence.[266]
Neither Saint Tikhon nor Metropolitan
Arsenius counselled armed rebellion against the State. However, some from the
ordinary people, seeing the increasing alienation of their sovereigns, and
their increasing immersion in the westernised culture of the nobility, took
action to liberate, as they saw it, the Russian tsardom from foreign and
heterodox influence. Thus the rebellion of Pugachev in 1774, while
superficially a rebellion for the sake of freedom, and the rights of Cossacks
and other minorities, was the very opposite of a democratic rebellion in
the western style. For Pugachev did not seek to destroy the institution of the
tsardom: on the contrary, he proclaimed himself to be Tsar Peter III, the
husband of the Empress Catherine. He was claiming to be the real Tsar,
who would restore the real Orthodox traditions of pre-Petrine Russia –
by which he meant Old Believerism.
As we have
seen, a false legitimism, as opposed to liberalism, was also
characteristic of the popular rebellions in the Time of Troubles. K.N. Leontiev
considered it to be characteristic also of Stenka Razin’s rebellion in 1671,
and saw this legitimism as another proof of how deeply the Great Russian people
was penetrated by the Byzantine spirit: “Even almost all our major rebellions
have never had a Protestant or liberal-democratic character, but have borne
upon themselves the idiosyncratic seal of false-legitimism, that is, of that
native and religious monarchist principle, which created the whole greatness of
our State.
“The
rebellion of Stenka Razin failed immediately people became convinced that the
tsar did not agree with their ataman. Moreover, Razin constantly tried to show
that he was fighting, not against royal blood, but only against the boyars and
the clergy who agreed with them.
“Pugachev was cleverer in fighting against
the government of Catherine, whose strength was incomparably greater than the
strength of pre-Petrine Rus'. He deceived the people, he used that legitimism
of the Great Russian people of which I have been speaking" [267]
“The slogan of Pugachev’s movement,”
writes Ivanov, “was ‘The Freedom of the Orthodox Faith’. In his
manifestos Pugachev bestowed ‘the cross and the beard’ on the Old Believers. He
promised that in his new kingdom, after Petersburg had been destroyed, everyone
would ‘hold the old faith, the shaving of beards will be strictly forbidden, as
well as the wearing of German clothes.’ The present churches, went the rumour,
would be razed, seven-domed ones would be built, the sign of the cross would be
made, not with three fingers, but with two. In Pugachev the people saw the
longed-for lawful tsar. It was in this
that the power of Pugachev’s movement consisted. There is no doubt that
economic reasons played a significant role in this movement. The dominance of
foreigners and Russian rubbish under Peter I and of the Masonic oligarchy under
his successors had created fertile soil for popular discontent. The Masonic
oligarchy acted in its own egoistic interests, despising the needs and
interests of the people.”[268]
Of course, the truth of this accusation
did not justify the bloody excesses of his rebellion against Catherine, whom
the Church and the great mass of the people still recognised as the lawful
anointed sovereign. For the eighteenth-century sovereigns of Russia, while
being despotic in their administration, non-Russian in their culture, and only
superficially Orthodox in their faith, did nevertheless serve the ends of
Divine Providence. Thus it was under Peter I, and with his active support, that
the Russian Spiritual Mission in Beijing was established.[269]
And it was under Catherine especially that the age-old persecutor of Russian
Orthodoxy, Poland, was humbled, literally disappearing from the map of Europe
(see the next section). Again, Ottoman Turkey was driven from the north shore
of the Black Sea, thus enabling the fertile lands of southern Russia to be
colonised and exploited. These important military triumphs, which were
essential for the survival of the Orthodox Empire into the next century
(although they created their own problems, as we shall see), would have been
impossible, given Russia’s lack of economic development, without a very
authoritarian, even despotic, power at the helm.
Moreover, it must be remembered that at
this low point in Russia’s spiritual progress, a rigid straitjacket may well
have been necessary. Thus with regard to religion, as the historian Mikhail
Pogodin once commented, “if the ban on apostasy had been lifted, half the
Russian peasants would have joined the raskol [Old Believers], while
half the aristocrats would have converted to Catholicism.”[270]
Although this statement is clearly an exaggeration, it nevertheless contains
this kernel of truth: that the greater initiative and responsibility given to
the Church and people in a true Orthodox autocracy would have been too great a
burden for the Russian Church and people to sustain at this time.
Sometimes the body needs to regain its
strength before the soul can begin the process of regeneration. A broken limb
needs to be strapped in a rigid encasement of plaster of Paris until the break
has healed, the plaster can be removed and the restored limb is strong enough
to step out without any support. In the same say, the straitjacket of
"Orthodox absolutism”, contrary to Orthodox norms and the Orthodox ideal
though it was, was perhaps necessary until the double fracture in Russian
society caused by westernism and the Old Believer schism could be healed…
Poland:
Nation without a State
Poland, the main persecutor of Orthodoxy
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, only gradually relaxed its
persecution in the eighteenth century. Thus the Polish nobility, writes Vital,
were “overwhelmingly opposed to giving non-Roman Catholic Christians (the
Orthodox, the Lutherans, and the Calvinists) political rights until well into
the eighteenth century. Only in 1768 did ‘dissidents’ get ‘partial equality’.
They were admitted to municipal citizenship in 1775. They lost it two years
later. Opposition to the abolition of serfdom and the corvée was still
more intense.”[271]
However, the country profited not at all
from its hatred of Orthodoxy, falling, in the course of the eighteenth century,
into a steep decline that ended in its destruction as an independent State.
In 1717, as a result of civil war between
King Augustus II and his nobles, Poland fell for the first time under the
effective control of Russia. “By acting as mediator,” writes Norman Davies,
“Peter the Great could save the Polish nobles from their Saxon king while
imposing conditions that would reduce the Republic to dependence.” Among the
resolutions passed at the “Silent Sejm” was the upholding of the “golden liberties”
of the nobles, whereby the central government could be paralysed by the liberum
veto of even a single delegate to the Sejm – one of the most perverse
constitutional provisions in the history of European statehood, and an enduring
monument to the folly of excessive freedom.
“Under August III,” continues Davies, “the
central government collapsed completely. The King had to be installed by a
Russian army which had overturned the re-election of Stanslaw Leszcynski,
thereby sparking off the War of the Polish Succession; but he usually stayed in
Dresden. The Sejm was regularly summoned, but regularly blocked by the liberum
veto before it could meet. Only one session in 30 years was able to pass
legislation. By an extreme example of the principle of subsidiarity, government
was left to the magnates and to the provincial dietines. The Republic had no
diplomacy, no treasury, no defence. It could enact no reforms. It was the butt
of the philosophes. When the first edition of the French Encyclopédie
was published in 1751, the prominent article on ‘Anarchie’ was all about
Poland.
“The reforming party fled abroad, thereby
starting the unbroken Polish tradition of political emigration. Stanislaw
Leszczynski, twice elected king and twice driven out by the Russians, took
refuge in France. Having married his daughter to Louis XV he was given the
Duchy of Lorraine where, at Nancy, as le bon roi Stanislas he could
practise the enlightened government forbidden at home.
“Stanislaw August Poniatowski (r. 1764-95),
the last King of Poland, was a tragic and in some ways a noble figure. One of
Catherine the Great’s earlier lovers, he was put in place with the impossible
task of reforming the Republic whilst preserving the Russian supremacy. As it
was, shackled by the constitution of 1717, he provoked the very convulsions
which reform was supposed to avoid. How could one curtail the nobles’ sacred
right of resistance without some nobles’ resisting? How could one limit the
Russians’ right of intervention without the Russians intervening? How could one
abolish the liberum veto without someone exercising the liberum veto?
The King tried to break the vicious circle on three occasions; and on three
occasions he failed. One each occasion a Russian army arrived to restore order,
and one each occasion the Republic was punished with partition. In the 1760s
the King’s proposals for reform led to the war of the Confederation of Bar
(1768-72) and to the First Partition. In 1787-92 the King’s support for the
reforms of the Great Sejm and the Constitution of 3 May (1791) led to the
Confederation of Targowica and the Second Partition… In 1794-5 the King’s
adherence to the national rising of Tadeusz Kosciuszko led to the final
denouement. After the Third Partition, there was no Republic left over which to
reign. Poniatowski abdicated on St. Catherine’s Day 1795, and died in Russian
exile.”[272]
The Confederation of Bar was perhaps the
earliest harbinger of the revolutionary turmoil that was to sweep the whole of
Europe, containing within itself the seeds of the libertarian, nationalist and
romantic ideas that were not to become commonplace until fifty years later. It
based itself, writes Adam Zamoyski, “on an imagined ideal past, when the Poles
were supposedly all brave and uncorrupted Sarmatians. Nostalgia for lost
virtues fused with opposition to the king’s attempts to modernize the country;
the defence of noble privilege was confused with republican mythology; Catholic
devotionalism mixed up with tribal instincts. With its luridly expressed
rejection of the alleged corruption of the Warsaw court, the movement set
itself up as the defender of the nation’s honour, its morals, its very soul.
Its first marshal, Jozef Pulaski, set the tone in a speech at Bar on 30 June
1768. ‘We are to die so that the motherland may live; for while we live the
motherland is dying,’ he began, and carried on in much the same pathological
vein. This was something more than the accepted notion of ‘dulce et decorum
est pro patria mori’; it actually demanded death as the price of the
nation’s life which, in this case, had little to do with actual political
liberty. The Barians entertained a mythopoeic conviction that their ancestors,
the legendary Sarmatians, had lived in a kind of ideal republican anarchy. It
was this state of being, this Eden, they were dying to recover. These and other
sentiments were echoed in an abundant crop of political poetry, woven on a loom
of Catholic mysticism.
“In line
with the Enlightenment’s usual obloquy of all things Christian, Voltaire
condemned the rebels as grotesque religious fanatics, but for once he did not
go unchallenged. Few people had any idea of what the struggle was really about,
but they were learning to sentimentalise politics. And as soon as people began to
talk in terms of a nation struggling for its existence, sympathy veered to the
side of the confederates. Rousseau met one of the few intelligent members of
the Confederation, its agent in Paris Count Michal Wielhorski, who gave him his
views on the government appropriate to Poland.
“Rousseau seized on these as a pretext for
a theoretical discourse, actually a kind of utopian fantasy on the subject of
nationhood. His Considérations sur le gouvernment de Pologne celebrates
the form of the Confederation as a ‘political masterpiece’, allowing as it did
a group of public-spirited men to stand up in the name of the nation and to
assert its sovereignty by virtue of their will. He extolled the act of fighting
for liberty as something great in itself. Realizing that the Confederation
would probably be crushed, Rousseau urged the Poles to ‘grasp the opportunity
given by the present event to raise souls to the tone of the souls of
antiquity’. But they must look to Moses as well as to the state-builders of
Greece and Rome, for there was more to a nation than just a state. ‘The laws of
Solon, of Numa, of Lycurgus are dead while the even older laws of Moses still
live,’ he reminded them. ‘Athens, Sparta, Rome have perished and have left no
children on earth. Zion, while destroyed, did not lose its children… They no
longer have leaders and yet they are a people, they no longer have a country
and yet they are citizens.’ This asserted the primacy of the nation over the
state and the geographical motherland, and suggested a role for it akin to that
of a religious brotherhood. The title of ‘citizen’, which designated member of
this community was, by inference, the most honourable a man could have.”[273]
In view of this cross-fertilisation
between revolutionary currents in Poland and France, it is not surprising that
at the time of the Confederation of Targowica in 1792 Catherine II should have
taken fright, seeing Warsaw as “a brazier of Jacobinism” (a Jacobin Club was
founded in Warsaw in 1794). However, the invasion that followed, and the Second
Partition, did not discourage the Polish patriots. For the battle of Valmy in
the same year, during which the French revolutionary armies defeated Prussia,
encouraged them to believe “that a free nation in arms was invincible”.[274]
Even after the revolution of 1792-4 had
been comprehensively defeated, and the Third Partition of the country had
blotted the name of Poland from the map altogether, the Poles in exile did not
give up.
“’The nation is formed through the law of
nature alone’, ran the manifesto of the Society of Polish Republicans, founded
in exile. ‘Government stems from the will of the nation. The nation stands
before all things and is the source of all things. Its will is always law.
Above it and before it is but the law of nature alone. By virtue of its very
existence, the nation is all things that it may be. The nation cannot surrender
its rights to a tyrant.’
“Rousseau’s fantasies had been prophetic.
The Poles had become a nation without a state, and, repeating the history of
the Jews, they were henceforth to carry their Polishness with them.”[275]
Masonry
under Catherine
In Russia, Pugachev’s rebellion – and
still more the French revolution of 1789 – had the good effect of turning the
Empress Catherine against the Enlightenment ideas of which she had been so
enamoured in her youth and which had penetrated Russia mainly through the
masonic lodges. Nevertheless, it was under Catherine that the nobles, and
therefore the Masons, reached the peak of their influence in Russia.
As Hartley writes: “Freemasonry only
became popular amongst the nobility in the reign of Catherine II. This was
partly because freemasonry was one of many manifestations of the cultural
influence of western and central Europe on the nobility at the time, and partly
because, after their freedom from compulsory service in 1762, they had the
leisure and opportunity to become involved in private social activities of this
nature, both in the capitals and in the provinces.
“Russian lodges were based on English,
German or Swedish systems. Ivan Elagin, an influential figure at court in the
early years of Catherine II, founded the Russian Grand Provincial Lodge in
1771, modelled on the English system, which involved progression through three
degrees within the lodge. Some 14 lodges were opened in St. Petersburg, Moscow
and the provinces based on this model. Many Russians, however, were attracted
to lodges which had more complex degrees and mystical elements. Baron P.B.
Reichel established the Apollo lodge in 1771, which depended on the Grand Lodge
of Zinnendorf in Berlin, and soon controlled 8 lodges in German-speaking Riga
and Reval. In 1776 the Reichel and Elagin lodges merged and accepted the
leadership of the Berlin lodge, and Elagin became the grand master of the new
united Grand Provincial lodge. Almost immediately, members of this new lodge
became influenced by the Swedish Order of the Temple, a lodge which comprised
ten degrees, and whose elaborate robes and knightly degrees particularly
appealed to a Russian nobility which lacked knightly orders and traditions of
medieval chivalry. In 1778 the first Swedish-style lodge, the Phoenix, was set
up in St. Petersburg, followed in 1780 by the Swedish Grand National lodge
under the direction of Prince G.P. Gagarin. In the early 1780s there were 14
Swedish lodges in St. Petersburg and Moscow and a few more in the provinces.
Most of the Elagin lodges, however, did not join the Swedish system, partly
because a direct association with Sweden at a time of diplomatic tension
between Russia and Sweden seemed inappropriate.
“Adherents of freemasonry continued to
seek new models to help them in their search for further illumination or for
more satisfying rituals and structures. I.G. Schwartz, a member of the Harmonia
lodge in Moscow, founded by Nikolai Novikov in 1781, brought Russian
freemasonry into close association with the strict observance lodge of the
grand master Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick. The lodge became the VIIIth province
of the Brunswick lodge, under the acting head of Prince N. Trubestkoi. It is
not known how many of the Elagin lodges joined the VIIIth province. Within the
VIIIth province there emerged a small esoteric group of masons who were heavily
influenced by the Rosicrucian movement, knowledge of whose charters and seven
degrees had been brought back to Russia from Berlin by Schwartz. Masonic and
Rosicrucian literature spread through Russia, largely as a result of the
activity of the private printing press set up by Novikov (until the 1790s when
masonic publications were censured and banned). Lodges were also set up in the
provinces, particularly when provincial governors were masons. Governor-General
A.P. Mel’gunov, for example, opened a lodge in Iaroslavl’. Vigel’ founded a
lodge in remote Penza in the late eighteenth century. Even where there was no
lodge, provincial nobles could become acquainted with masonry through
subscriptions to publications such as Novikov’s Morning Light.
“Who became freemasons? The Russian
historian Vernadsky estimated that in 1777 4 of the 11-member Council of State,
11 of the 31 gentlemen of the bedchamber, 2 of the 5 senators of the first
department of the Senate, 2 of the 5 members of the College of Foreign Affairs
and the vice-president of the Admiralty College were masons (there were none
known at this date in the War College). A large number of the noble deputies in
the Legislative Commission were masons. Members of the high aristocracy and
prominent figures at court were attracted to freemasonry, including the
Repnins, Trubetskois, Vorontsovs and Panins. Special lodges attracted army
officers (like the Mars lodge, founded at Iasi in Bessarabia in 1774) and naval
officers (like the Neptune lodge, founded in 1781 in Kronstadt). There were
masons amongst the governors of provinces established after 1775 (including
A.P. Mel’gunov in Iaroslavl’ and J.E. Sievers in Tver’), and amongst senior
officials in central and provincial institutions. Almost all Russian poets,
playwrights, authors and academics were masons. Other lodges had a
predominantly foreign membership, which included academics, members of
professions, bankers and merchants….
“Catherine II had little sympathy for the
mystical elements of freemasonry and their educational work and feared that
lodges could become venues for conspiracies against the throne. In the 1790s,
at a time of international tension following the French Revolution, Catherine
became more suspicious of freemasonry, following rumours that Grand Duke Paul…
was being induced to join a Moscow lodge. In 1792 (shortly after the
assassination of Gustavus III of Sweden), Novikov’s house was searched and
masonic books were found which had been banned as harmful in 1786. Novikov was
arrested and sentenced, without any formal trial, to fifteen years
imprisonment, though he was freed when Paul came to the throne in 1796. In
1794, Catherine ordered the closure of all lodges. Freemasonry continued,
however, to attract young educated Russians in the early nineteenth century.
The movement was encouraged by the rumours, which cannot be substantiated, that
Alexander I became a mason (he certainly visited lodges in Russia and Germany);
his younger brother Constantine certainly was a mason. Regional lodges
continued to flourish and young army officers who accompanied Russian forces
through Europe in 1813 and 1814 also attended, and were influenced by, lodges
in the territory through which they passed. The constitutions of secret
societies which were formed by army officers in the wake of the Napoleonic
Wars, like the Order of the Russian Knights and the Union of Salvation and
Welfare, copied some of their rules and hierarchical organization from masonic
lodges. In 1815, the higher orders of masonry in Russia were subordinated to the
Astrea grand lodge.”[276]
Florovsky writes: “The freemasons of
Catherine’s reign maintained an ambivalent relationship with the Church. In any
event, the formal piety of freemasonry was not openly disruptive. Many
freemasons fulfilled all church ‘obligations’ and rituals. Others emphatically
insisted on the complete immutability and sacredness of the rites and orders
‘particularly of the Greek religion. However, the Orthodox service, with its
wealth and plasticity of images and symbols, greatly attracted them. Freemasons
highly valued Orthodoxy’s tradition of symbols whose roots reach back deeply
into classical antiquity. But every symbol was for them only a transparent sign
or guidepost. One must ascend to that which is being signified, that is, from the
visible to the invisible, from ‘historical’ Christianity to spiritual or ‘true’
Christianity, from the outer church to the ‘inner’ church. The freemasons
considered their Order to be the ‘inner’ church, containing its own rites and
‘sacraments’. This is once again the Alexandrian [Gnostic] dream of an esoteric
circle of chosen ones who are dedicated to preserving sacred traditions: a
truth revealed only to a few chosen for extraordinary illumination.”[277]
Shcherbatov:
A Critic of Petrine Despotism
Eighteenth-century Russian Masonry, unlike
its contemporary French counterpart, was not very radical in its politics. Thus
Novikov, according to Pipes, must be classified as “a political conservative
because of his determination to work ‘within the system’, as one would put it
today. A freemason and a follower of Saint-Martin, he thought all evil stemmed
from man’s corruption, not from institutions under which he lived. He
mercilessly exposed ‘vice’ and promoted with such enthusiasm useful knowledge
because of the conviction that only improving man could one improve mankind. He
never questioned the autocratic form of government or even serfdom. This stress
on man rather than the environment became a hallmark of Russian conservatism.”[278]
Another Mason who was conservative in his
political thought was Prince Michael Shcherbatov, who represented the extreme
right wing of the aristocratic opposition to Catherine. He was a monarchist who
believed in the close alliance of tsar and aristocrats, and opposed all concessions
to the peasantry or the merchants. He believed that Russia’s traditional
autocracy had been replaced by despotism under Peter, who treated the
aristocrats brutally and opened the way for widespread “voluptuousness” in
Russian life.
“Shcherbatov,” writes Walicki, “drew
special attention to the individualization of personal relations and to the
consequent changes in the attitude to women. In Peter’s reign it became
customary for the bride and bridegroom to meet before the wedding, joint ‘assemblies’
were organized for men and women, and more attention was paid to personal
appearance. ‘Passionate love, unknown in earlier primitive conditions, began to
hold sway over sensitive hearts.’ The only hairdresser in Moscow was besieged
by her clients – for feast days some of them came to her three days in advance
and had to sleep sitting upright for three nights in order not to spoil their
coiffure. Dandies of both capitals vied with each other in extravagance and
fashionable dress. Peter, Shcherbatov admitted, had no great love of luxury
himself, but he encouraged excess in others in order to stimulate industry,
handicrafts, and trade.
“Another cause of the corruption of morals
was the bureaucratic hierarchy established by Peter, which encouraged personal
ambition and placed government officials above the nobility. ‘Is it possible,’
Shcherbatov asked, ‘for people who from early youth tremble at the stick in the
hands of their superiors to preserve virtue and strength of character?’ The
brutal suddenness of the reforms had been injurious to the nation’s morals:
Peter had waged too radical a war on superstition; Shcherbatov compared him to
an inexperienced gardener who prunes his trees too far. ‘There was less
superstition, but also less faith; the former servile fear of hell disappeared,
but so did love of God and His holy laws.’
“In his criticism of the Petrine reforms
and his unusually acute and comprehensive treatment of the issue of ‘ancient
and modern Russia’, Shcherbatov was to some extent a precursor of the
Slavophiles, as Herzen was to point out. It is significant that Shcherbatov,
like the Slavophiles, was strongly critical of the transfer of the capital from
the old boyar stronghold of Moscow to the newly built St. Petersburg, which personified
the supremacy of bureaucratic absolutism.
“The analogy between Shcherbatov and
Slavophilism is, however, largely superficial and even unreliable. In his Discourse
there is no antithesis between Russia and Europe; and his views on juridical questions,
social systems, and the significance of political rights clearly derived from
Western European (especially Enlightenment) sources and were therefore far
removed from the romanticism of the Slavophiles and their idealization of the
common people. His faith in the role of the aristocracy was equally
‘occidental’; the Slavophiles,… viewed ‘aristocratism’ as a negative phenomenon
that was fortunately quite alien to the ‘truly Christian’ principles of ancient
Russia.
“An interesting light is cast on
Shcherbatov’s political ideals by his utopian tale Journey to the Land of
Ophir (1784). In the apt description of a contemporary scholar, this
presents an idealized version of the ‘orderly police state’. This work would
not have been to the taste of either the Slavophiles or Montesquieu, from whose
writings Shcherbatov drew arguments in support of his critique of despotism.
“The population of Ophir is divided into
hermetically sealed-off free estates and serfs, whom the author quite simply
calls ‘slaves’. The daily life of every inhabitant is subject to the most
detailed control, and excessive luxury or the relaxation of morals is severely
punished. Strict regulations lay down what clothes a citizen of each class may
wear, how large a house he may live in, how many servants he may have, what
utensils he may use, and even what gratuities he may dispense. In his ideal
state the opponent of bureaucracy and depotism carried the despotic and
bureaucratic regimentation of life to extremes. To Shcherbatov himself there
was no contradiction in this, since he did not consider the strict control of
morals to be inconsistent with political liberty. In the state of Ophir there
were, after all, such guarantees against despotism as ‘fundamental rights,’
representation of the estates, the abolition of the household guard, and so on.
One of the important guarantees of liberty was to be the law forbidding
peasants to lay complaint against their masters to the sovereign. In
Shcherbatov’s eyes the right to peition the emperor was only likely to
reinforce the uncouth peasantry’s belief in the ‘good tsar’, whereas rulers,
made aware of the people’s support, might become presumptuous and turn into
despots.
“Some of
the features of Shcherbatov’s utopia can be traced to his Freemasonry and the
Masonic cult of formalism, hierarchy, and outward distinctions. This influence
is most obvious in the sections devoted to education and religion. Education in
Ophir is free and compulsory for every citizen, although its extent differs for
every estate. Religion is reduced to a rationalistic cult of the supreme being,
and there is no separate priesthood that gains a livelihood from religious
practices. Sacraments, offerings, and all mysteries are discarded, prayers are
short and few, and communal prayers resemble Masonic ritual. Atheism, however,
is forbidden, and attendance at church is compulsory, on pain of punishment.
“The Masonic provenance of certain
elements of the utopia does not account for it altogether. The best key to an
understanding of Shcherbatov’s tale is probably to be found in his views on
‘ancient and modern Russia’. Attention has been drawn to the fact that the
detailed bureaucratic system of the state of Ophir reflects certain features of
post-Petrine Russia. However, a comparison between Ophir and the picture of
pre-Petrine Russia drawn in the Discourse would seem to offer an even more
fruitful approarch. In both cases private life is governed by strict
regulations and norms – in one by legal decrees, and in the other by hallowed
traditions and religion. In both cases the division into estates and the
hermetic isolation of those estates – especially the isolation of the nobility
– are guarantees of social cohesion and the flowering of civic virtues.
Finally, in both cases strict morals and moderate requirements prevent the
spread of the insidious ‘voluptuousness’. It is important to note that his
examination of the differences between ancient and modern Russia had convinced
Shcherbatov that strict control and regimentation of morals should not be
confused with despotism. Ancient Russia, he claimed, had not on the whole been
a despotic society, largely because it had remained faithful to a traditional
way of life that set out appropriate spheres of activity for everyone –
including the tsar – and thus precluded arbitrary rule. In modern Russia, on
the other hand, despotism had spawned ‘the corruption of morals that was to
become its most faithful ally.’”[279]
Radishchev:
A Critic of Orthodox Autocracy
If Shcherbatov represented a nobleman
pining nostalgically for the non-despotic orderliness of pre-Petrine Russia,
Count Nikita Panin and Alexander Radishchev represented a more radical,
forward-looking element in the aristocracy. Panin and his brother had already,
as we have seen, taken part in the coup against Peter III which brought
Catherine to the throne. But when Catherine refused to adopt Nikita’s plan for
a reduction in the powers of the autocrat and an extension of the powers of the
aristocratic Senate, they plotted to overthrow her, too.
Their plot was discovered; but Catherine
pardoned them.
Nothing daunted, Nikita wrote a Discourse
on the Disappearance in Russia of All Forms of Government, intended for his
pupil, Crown Prince Paul, in which he declared: “Where the arbitrary rule of
one man is the highest law, there can be no lasting or unifying bonds; there is
a state, but no fatherland; there are subjects, but no citizens; there is no
body politic whose members are linked to each other by a network of duties and
privileges.”[280]
With Alexander Radishchev, we come to the
first true, consistent Enlightenment figure in Russian history. His Journey
from St. Petersburg to Moscow (1790), writes Pipes, “exposed the seamier sides
of Russian provincial life…[He] drank deeply at the source of the French
Enlightenment, showing a marked preference for its more extreme materialist
wing (Helvétius and d’Holbach).”[281]
Thus if Voltaire, Rousseau and the other philosophes
introduced English social contract theory into France, thereby providing the
philosophical justification for the French revolution, it was Radishchev, whose
favourite countries were England and the United States, who introduced the
theory into Russia, thereby laying the foundation for the Russian revolution.
“Radishchev thought of the original
presocial state of mankind as a form of isolated existence in which men were
not subject to any hierarchical pressures. Human imperfections, however, made
it impossible for this state to continue; men formed nations and thus entered
the social state. Radischchev had a wholly rationalist and nominalist view of
the nation as ‘a collection of citizens’ rather than a supra-individual whole
endowed with a ‘collective soul’. A nation, as he put it, is a ‘collection of
individuals’, a political society composed of men who ‘have come together in
order to safeguard their own interests and security by their collective
efforts; it is a society submitting to authority. Since all men, however, are
by nature free, and no one has the right to deprive them of this freedom, the
setting up of a society always assumes real or tacit agreement.’ As this
quotation shows, ‘nation’ for Radishchev was a juridico-political concept
indistinguishable from society, which in its turn was inseparably bound up with
state organization. Radishchev even attempted to make a legal definition of
‘fatherland’ as a set of people linked together by mutually binding laws and
civic duties. The essay On What It Means to Be a Son of the Fatherland is an
excellent illustration of this. Only a man who enjoys civic rights can be a son
of his fatherland, Radishchev argues. Peasants cannot claim this privilege
since they bear ‘the yoke of serfdom’; they are not ‘members of the state’, or
even people, but ‘machines driven by their tormentors, lifeless corpses, draft
oxen.’ In order to be a son of the fatherland it is not enough, however, to
possess civic rights; it is equally important to show civic virtue by doing
one’s best to fulfil one’s duties. Men who are without nobility or honor, who
make no contribution to the general good, and who do not respect prevailing
laws cannot therefore claim to be sons of the fatherland.
“In keeping with current thinking,
Radishchev distinguished between natural law and civil law, the first being an
unwritten, innate right, an inalienable attribute of humanity, the second being
a written code that only comes into being after the establishment of the social
contract. The worst political system is despotism, since in it the arbitrary
will of the ruler is placed above the law. Even in his first work – the notes
to his translation of Mably’s Observations sur l’histoire de la Grèce
– Radishchev gives the following definition of autocracy: ‘Autocracy is the
system most repugnant to human nature… If we relinquish part of our rights and
our inborn sovereignty in favor of an all-embracing law, it is in order that it
might be used to our advantage; to this end we conclude a tacit agreement with
society. If this is infringed, then we too are released from our obligations.
The injustice of the sovereign gives the people, who are his judges, the same
or an even greater right over him than the law gives him to judge criminals.
The sovereign is the first citizen of the people’s commonwealth….
“In the Journey from St. Petersburg to
Moscow, a nobleman tells his sons who are about to enter government
service: ‘The law, however bad it is, is the bond that holds society together.’
In keeping with this assumption, Radishchev regarded legality – i.e. respect
for civil law by all, including the sovereign – as the basic requirement for
the proper functioning of society. But it is not enough to replace arbitrary
rule by the rule of law; civil law cannot be contrary to natural law and must
be founded on the agreement of the entire nation. Where natural law conflicted
with civil law, Radishchev gave priority to the former. In the Journey
he wrote:
“’Every man is born into the world equal
to all others. All have the same bodily parts, all have reason and will.
Consequently, apart from his relation to society, man is a being that depends
on no one in his actions. But he puts limits to his own freedom of action, he
agrees not to follows his own will in everything, he subjects himself to the
commands of his equals; in a word, he becomes a citizen. For what reason does
he control his passions? Why does he set up a governing authority over himself?
Why, though free to see fulfilment of his will, does he confine himself within
the bounds of obedience? For his own advantage, reason will say; for his own
advantage, inner feeling will say; for his own advantage, wise legislation will
say. Consequently, wherever being a citizen is not to his advantage, he is not
a citizen… If the law is unable or unwilling to protect him, or if its power
cannot furnish him immediate aid in the face of clear and present danger, then
the citizen has recourse to the natural law of self-defence, self-preservation,
and well-being… No matter to what estate may have decreed a citizen’s birth, he
is and will always remain a man; and so long as he is a man, the law of nature
as an abundant wellspring of goodness will never run dray in him, and whosoever
dares wound him in his natural and inviolable right is a criminal.’”[282]
This is pure westernism; and Radishchev
represents the first truly modern, completely westernised Russian. The ideas of
duty, of self-sacrifice, of God and immortality… play no part in his thought.
Everything is based on the idea of individual advantage, self-interest pure and
simple. “The sovereign is the first citizen of the people’s commonwealth.”
“Wherever being a citizen is not to his advantage, he is not a citizen.” Such
ideas lead logically to the self-annihilation of society. In his personal case,
they led to suicide.
“There are grounds for assuming,” writes
Walicki, “that this act was not the result of a temporary fit of depression.
Suicide had never been far from his thoughts. In the Journey from St.
Petersburg to Moscow he wrote: ‘If outrageous fortune hurl upon you all its
slings and arrows, if there is no refuge left on earth for your virtue, if,
driven to extremes, you find no sanctuary from oppression, then remember this:
you are a man, call to mind your greatness and seize the crown of bliss which
they are trying to take from you. Die.”[283]
Radischev
clearly exemplifies the bitter fruits of the westernizing reforms of Peter the
Great and his successors. It was this mad, proud striving for mastery of one’s
life, without acknowledgement of the Master, God, that was to lead much of
Europe to a kind of collective suicide in the next age. And its appearance in
Orthodox Russia was the result, in large part, of the “reforms” of Peter I and
Catherine II.
“On the
whole,” writes Nikolin, “the 18th century was an age of practically
unceasing attempts on the part of the State power to rework the world-view of
the Russian man, and the way of life of the Russian people, on a German,
Protestant model. It was an age when the State power, instead of working
together with the Church ‘to adorn the life of men’ through the religious
education of the people, set out on the path of its gradual religious
corruption, its alienation from the Church.
“As a
result of the Church, or more accurately anti-Church, reforms of Peter I and
the actions of his successors, there began a cooling towards the Orthodox faith
in the Russian people, in the first place among the nobility. Freethinking and
superstition increased. Russian educated society began to be ashamed of its
faith, the faith of its fathers. Peter I injected into the Russian people, who
were living a life of sincere, childlike, simple-hearted religiousness, the
seeds of rationalist Protestantism – when the mind begins to prevail over the faith
and deceive man by the supposed independence and progressiveness of its
origins. At the same time the Russian Church was deprived of the possibility of
fighting with Protestantism, and of educating men in the true faith. The
actions of the State power led to a situation in which in Rus’ there began to
empty many ‘places sanctified by the exploits of the holy monks. The path along
which the masses of the people walked to the holy elders for instruction, and
to the holy graves for prayer, began to be grown over. Many schools, hospitals
and workhouses attached to the churches and monasteries were closed. Together
with the closing of the monasteries an end [only a temporary end, fortunately]
was also put to the great work of the enlightenment of the natives in Siberia
and other places in boundless Russia.’”[284]
Part II. THE ROMANTIC-NATIONALIST AGE
(1789-1830)
3. THE WEST: THE MAN-GOD ARISES
Lo,
thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor’d;
Light
dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy
hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And
Universal Darkness buries All.
Alexander
Pope, Dunciad.
The
human I, wishing to depend only on itself,
not recognising and not accepting any other law besides its own will
–
in a word, the human I, taking the place of God, -
does not, of course, constitute something new among men.
But such has it become when
raised to the status of a political and social right,
and when it strives, by virtue of this right, to rule society.
This is the new phenomenon which acquired the name
of the French revolution in 1789.
F.I.
Tyutchev.[285]
The nation, this collective organism,
is just as inclined
To
deify itself as the individual man.
The
madness of pride grows in this case in the same progression
As
every passion becomes inflamed in society,
Being
refracted in thousands and millions of souls.
Metropolitan Anastasius (Gribanovsky) of New York.[286]
After the
Humanist-Protestant revolution of the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries, and the
Enlightenment Programme two hundred years later, the French revolution of 1789
marks the third major turning-point in Western life and thought. In some
countries – England, for example, - some of the less radical ideas of the
French revolution were already being put into effect, at least partially, well
before 1789; while in others – Russia, for example – they did not achieve
dominance until the twentieth century. Eventually, however, the French
revolutionary ideals of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” and the Rights of
Man, combined with an essentially secularist and utilitarian attitude to
religion, became the dominant ideology, not only of Europe and North America,
but of the whole world. For, as Eric Hobsbawn writes, “alone of all the
contemporary revolutions, the French was ecumenical. Its armies set out to
revolutionize the world; its ideas actually did so.”[287]
The period
1789-1830 can be compared, for its profound impact on the destinies of the
world, only with the period 1914-45. Both periods are dominated by a national
revolution with enormous international ramifications – the French in the
earlier period, the Russian in the later – and by international war on a
previously unprecedented scale. In both periods the main victors were an
Anglo-Saxon nation (Britain in the earlier period, America in the later), on
the one hand, and Russia (Tsarist Russia in the earlier period, Soviet Russia
in the later), on the other. At the end of each period, and for at least
another fifty years thereafter, Russia became the dominant political power on
the continent of Europe, while the Anglo-Saxon nation became the dominant power
outside Europe, going on to dominate the world economically through its
exploitation of important scientific and technological discoveries.
The French revolution, like its English
forerunner, went through several phases, each of which on its own was
profoundly influential outside the borders of France. The first was the
constitutional monarchy (1789-92). The second was the Jacobin terror (1792-94).
The third (after the interregnum of the Directory) was the Napoleonic
dictatorship and empire (1799-1815). Just as the English revolution had its
proto-communist elements, which, however, failed in the end, so did the French
(Babeuf’s failed coup of 1796). Just as the upshot of the English revolution
was to transfer power from the king to the landowning aristocracy, so the
upshot of the French revolution was to transfer power from the king and the
aristocrats to the bourgeoisie – a trend which came to dominate the whole of
Europe in the course of nineteenth century, with the exception of Russia and
Turkey.
The French Revolution: The Constitutional Monarchy
From a sociological point of view, France
in 1789 had not changed in essence since the eleventh century; it was an
agrarian, hierarchical society consisting of “the three Estates”: those who
prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the nobility) and those who worked (the
rest, mainly peasants). The ideas of the Enlightenment and Masonry had infected
a narrow stratum of the more educated classes. But the mass of the population
lived and thought as they had lived and thought for centuries.
It is customary to explain the French
revolution as the product of corrupt political, social and economic conditions,
and in particular of the vast gap in wealth and power between the ancien
régime and the people. Discontent with social and economic
injustices undoubtedly played a large part in fuelling this horrific atheist
and anti-theist outburst. But it was not the king who was primarily to blame for
these injustices: in the years 1745-89 he and his ministers made numerous
attempts at economic reform and a more equitable redistribution of the tax
burden. But they were always foiled by opposition at court and in the Parlements
from the aristocrats, who paid no tax. Thus when five of his minister Turgot’s
Six Edicts were rejected by the Paris Parlement in 1776, Louis XVI
observed: “I see well that there is no-one here but M. Turgot and myself who
love the people.”[288]
The aristocrats claimed that their
opposition was an expression of Montesquieu’s doctrine of the necessity of
checks on executive power, that they were acting to stop the growth of
despotism. In fact, however, they were trying to replace a royal “despotism”
with their own aristocratic one. For, as Hobsbawm writes, “the Revolution began
as an aristocratic attempt to recapture the state.”[289]
And here, as so often in history, the “despotism” of one man standing above the
political fray turned out to be less harmful to the majority of the population
than the despotism of an oligarchical clique pursuing only one class or
factional interest. Indeed, the problem with the French monarchy was not its
excessive strength, but its weakness, its inability to impose its will on the
privileged class in the way that the enlightened despots of Austria and Prussia
were able.
However, there was much more to the French
revolution than a conflict between king and nobility, letting in the Third
Estate that destroyed them both. The essential conflict was between two
concepts of authority: the idea that authority comes from above – ultimately,
from God, and the idea that it comes from below – ultimately from what
the Masons euphemistically called “Nature”. King Louis XVI quite clearly stated the Christian principle:
“I have taken the firm and sincere decision to remain loftily, publicly and
generously faithful to Him Who holds in His hand kings and kingdoms. I can only
be great through Him, because in Him alone is greatness, glory, majesty and
power; and because I am destined one day to be his living image on earth.”[290]
This firm, but at the same time humble statement of the doctrine, not so much
of the Divine right of kings, as of their Divine dependence on
the King of kings, was opposed by the satanic pride of the revolutionary faith.
“The Revolution is neither an act nor a fact,” said De Mounier. “It is a
political doctrine which claims to found society on the will of man instead of
founding it on the will of God, which puts the sovereignty of human reason in the
place of the Divine law.[291]
The great British parliamentarian, Edmund
Burke, also stressed the religious nature of the conflict: “We cannot, if we
would, delude ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is
a religious war. It includes in its object undoubtedly every other interest
of society as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It
is through this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the
accomplishment of all their other views. The French Revolution, impious at once
and fanatical, had no other plan for domestick power and foreign empire. Look
at all the proceedings of the National Assembly from the first day of declaring
itself such in the year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of
their business to be directly on this subject. In fact it is the spirit of the
whole. The religious system, called the Constitutional Church, was on the face
of the whole proceeding set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people[292],
and so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come,
when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion
whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with fire and sword…
This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect as formerly, but
a war against all sects and all religions…”[293]
So the real question that the revolution
sought to answer was not political or economic, but theological or ideological,
not: who pays the taxes?, but: who rules the universe?
It is striking how similar was the
sequence of events in the French Revolution to that in its English predecessor.
Just as the English revolution started with the king’s compelling need to seek
money for his war against the Scots, so the French revolution started with a
severe financial crisis caused by the king’s intervention in the American War
of Independence. And just as the English parliament’s refusal to accede to the
king’s request led successively to civil war, the overthrowing of the State
Church, the execution of the king, a radicalisation of the country to a state
of near-communist revolution, foreign wars (in Scotland and Ireland), and
finally a military dictatorship under Cromwell that restored order while
preserving many of the fruits of the revolution, so the refusal, first of the
Nobles’ Assembly and then of the Estates General to accede to the French king’s
request led to a constitutional monarchy, the overthrowing of the State Church,
the execution of the king, increased radicalisation and the Great Terror, wars
with both internal and external enemies, and finally a military dictatorship
under Napoleon that restored order while consolidating many of the results of
the revolution.
But the French Revolution went much further
than the English in the number of its victims, in the profundity of its effects
not only on France but on almost every country in Europe, and in its
unprecedented radicalism, even anti-theism.
It really began on June 17, 1789, when,
“having invited the two other Estates [the nobles and clergy] to join them, the
Third Estate [the bourgeois and peasants] broke the existing rules and
declared itself to be the sole National Assembly. This was the decisive break.
Three days later, locked out of their usual hall, the deputies met on the
adjacent tennis court, le jeu de paume, and swore an oath never to
disband until France was given a Constitution. ‘Tell your master,’ thundered
Count Mirabeau to the troops sent to disperse them, ‘that we are here by the
will of the people, and will not disperse before the threat of bayonets.’
“Pandemonium ensued. At court, the King’s
conciliatory ministers fell out with their more aggressive colleagues. On 11
July [the chief minister] Jacques Necker, who had received a rousing welcome at
the opening of the Estates General, was dismissed. Paris exploded. A
revolutionary headquarters coalesced round the Duc d’Orléans at the
Palais Royal. The gardens of the Palais Royal became a notorious playground of
free speech and free love. Sex shows sprang up alongside every sort of
political harangue. ‘The exile of Necker,’ screamed the fiery orator Camille
Desmoulins fearing reprisals, ‘is the signal for another St. Bartholomew of
patriots.’ The royal garrison was won over. On the 13th a Committee
of Public Safety[294]
was created, and 48,000 men were enrolled in a National Guard under General
Lafayette. Bands of insurgents tore down the hated barrières or
internal customs posts in the city, and ransacked the monastery of Saint-Lazare
in the search for arms. On the 14th, after 30,000 muskets were
removed from the Hôtel des Invalides, the royal fortress of the Bastille
was besieged. There was a brief exchange of gunfire, after which the governor
capitulated. The King had lost his capital. ”[295]
Power appeared to have passed from the
king to the National Assembly and the Third Estate; but already at this early
stage of the revolution (as in February, 1917 in Russia), real power was
neither with the king nor with any of the Estates, but with the mob – or
rather, with those who incited and controlled the mob. Thus on July 20 Arthur
Young wrote: “I hear nothing of their [the Assembly’s] moving from Versailles;
if they stay there under the control of an armed mob, they must make a government
that will please the mob; but they will, I suppose, be wise enough to move to
some central town, Tours, Blois or Orléans, where their deliberations
may be free. But the Parisian spirit of commotion spreads quickly…” So quickly,
in fact, that a year later Antoine, Comte de Rivarol could write: “Three
million armed peasants, from one end of the kingdom to the other, stop
travellers, check their papers, and bring the victims back to Paris; the town
hall cannot protect them from the fury of the patriotic hangman; the National
Assembly in raising Paris might well have been able to topple the throne, but
it cannot save a single citizen. The time will come… when the National Assembly
will say to the citizen army: ‘You have saved me from authority, but who will
save me from you?’ When authority has been overthrown, its power passes
inevitably to the lowest classes of society… Such is today the state of France
and its capital.”[296]
The success of the Revolution was assured
by the weakness of the King; for when “he who restrains” stops restraining,
“then everything is permitted”. Doyle writes: “News of the king’s surrender to
popular resistance broke all restraints. His acquiescence in the defeat of the
privileged orders was taken as a signal for all his subjects to take their own
measures against public enemies. The prolonged political crisis has spawned
countless wild rumours of plots to thwart the patriotic cause by starving the
people. Monastic and noble granaries, reputedly bulging with the proceeds of the
previous season’s rents, dues, and tithes, seemed obvious evidence of their
owners’ wicked intentions. Equally suspicious were urban merchants scouring
country markets far beyond their usual circuits to provide bread for hungry
townsmen. Besides, the roads were thronged with unprecedented numbers of men
seeking work as a result of the slump. Farmers had good reason to dread the
depredations of bands of travelling vagrants, and now took little persuading
that the kingdom was alive with brigands in aristocratic pay. It was just a
year since the notorious storms of July 1788, and as a promising harvest began
to ripen country people were particularly nervous. All this produced the ‘Great
Fear’, a massive panic that swept whole provinces in the last weeks of July and
left only the most peripheral regions untouched. Peasants assembled, armed
themselves, and prepared to fight off the ruthless hirelings of aristocracy.
Seen from a distance, such armed bands were often taken for brigands
themselves, and so the panic spread.
“In many areas villagers did not wait for
the marauders to arrive. Then it would be too late. They were determined to
make sure of aristocratic defeat by striking pre-emptively. After all, they
would only anticipating what the Assembly was bound to decree. As one country
priest explained, ‘When the inhabitants heard that everything was going to be
different they began to refuse to pay both [ecclesiastical] tithes and [feudal]
dues, considering themselves so permitted, they said, by the new law to come.’”[297]
On August 4, under pressure of the peasant
revolt, the National or Constituent Assembly dismantled the whole
extraordinarily complex apparatus of feudal France. On August 26, it passed the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which listed the following
“natural, inalienable and sacred rights”:
“’I. Men are born and remain free and
equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on public utility.
II. The purpose of every political
association is the preservation of the natural and unprescriptible rights of
men. These rights are liberty, property, and safety from, and resistance to,
oppression.
III. The principle of all sovereignty lies
in the nation. No body of men, and no individual, can exercise authority which
does not emanate directly therefrom.
IV. Liberty consists in the ability to do
anything which does not harm others.
V. The Law can only forbid actions which are injurious to society…
VI. The Law is the expression of the
General Will… It should be the same for all, whether to protect or to punish.
VII. No man can be accused, arrested, or
detained except in those instances which are determined by law.
VIII. The Law should only establish
punishments which are strictly necessary. No person should be punished by
retrospective legislation.
IX. No man [is] presumed innocent till found guilty…
X. No person should be troubled for his
opinions, even religious ones, so long as their manifestation does not threaten
public order.
XI. The free communication of thoughts and
opinions is one of men’s most precious rights. Every citizen, therefore, can
write, speak, and publish freely, saving only the need to account for abuses
defined by law.
XII. A public force is required to
guarantee the [above] rights. It is instituted for the benefit of all, not for
the use of those to whom it is entrusted.
XIII. Public taxation is indispensable for
the upkeep of the forces and the administration. It should be divided among all
citizens without distinction, according to their abilities.
XIV. Citizens… have the right to approve
the purposes, levels, and extent of taxation.
XV. Society has the right to hold every
public servant to account.
XVI. Any society in which rights are not
guaranteed nor powers separated does not have a constitution.
XVII. Property being a sacred and
inviolable right, no person can be deprived of it, except by public necessity,
legal process, and just compensation.’
“Social convention held that the ‘Rights
of Man’ automatically subsumed the rights of women. But several bold souls,
including Condorcet, disagreed, arguing that women had simply been neglected.
In due course the original Declaration was joined by new ideas, notably about
human rights in the social and economic sphere. Article XXI of the revised
Declaration of June 1793 stated: ’Public assistance is a sacred obligation [dette].
Society owes subsistence to unfortunate citizens, whether in finding work for
them, or in assuring the means of survival of those incapable of working.’
Slavery was outlawed in 1794. Religious toleration was guaranteed.”[298]
Every single one of these “rights” was
trampled on in the years that followed the Declaration, as not only France but
the whole of continental Europe was devoured by war and the despotism of the
“free” Republic.
In October a great crowd of hungry women
brought the king from Versailles to Paris. Thereafter for the next two years
the forging of a new Constitution that would include limited powers for the
king went ahead relatively peacefully. However, the king.could not make up his
mind whether to accept or reject the Revolution[299];
and this vacillation, combined with his arrest at Varennes on June 21, 1791
while attempting to flee the country, gradually undermined what remained of his
authority.[300] Moreover,
while the Assembly passed a large number of laws, it completely failed to solve
the problems which had propelled it to power – the financial insolvency of the
country. It simply printed money which rapidly deteriorated in value, fuelling
inflation, and in 1791 collected only 249 livres in taxes against 822.7 livres
expended.[301]
The institution which suffered most in the
years 1789-91 was the Catholic Church. It lost its feudal dues in August and
its lands in October, 1789. In February, 1790 all monasteries and convents,
except those devoted to educational and charitable work, were dissolved, and
new religious vows were forbidden. The weakened position of the Church encouraged
the Protestants, and in June 300 died in clashes between Catholics and
Protestants in Nîmes. Meanwhile, 150,000 papal subjects living in Avignon
and the Comtat agitated for integration with France. Pope Pius VI rejected
this, and on March 29 he also rejected the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
all the religious legislation so far passed in the Assembly. On July 12 a Civil
Constitution for the Clergy was passed, rationalising the Church’s
organisation, putting all the clergy on the State’s pay-roll and decreeing the
election of the clergy by lay assemblies who might included Protestants and
Jews as well as Catholics. The Pope had already, on July 10, pleaded with the
King to veto the Civil Constitution, but the king, advised by weak bishops, had
already given his preliminary sanction.
With the Pope tacitly but clearly against
the Civil Constitution, its acceptance or rejection became a test of faith for
Catholics. As opinion polarised in the country, on October 30 thirty bishops
from the Assembly signed an Exposition of Principles explaining that
“they could not connive at such radical changes without consulting the Church
through either a council or the Pope. Nevertheless patriots saw it as an
incitement to disobey the law, and local authorities, clamorously supported by
Jacobin clubs, began to enforce it. Bishops began to be expelled from
suppressed sees; chapters were dissolved. In October and early November the
first departmental bishops were elected. But this time the clergy did not meekly
accept its fate. There were protests. ‘I can no more’, declared the incumbent
of the doomed see of Senez, ‘renounce the spiritual contract which binds me to
my Church than I can renounce the promises of my baptism… I belong to my flock
in life and in death… If God wishes to test his own, the eighteenth century,
like the first century, will have its martyrs.’ The first elected bishop, the
deputy Expilly, who was chosen by the Finistère department, was refused
confirmation by the archbishop of Rennes. In Soissons, the bishop was dismissed
by the departmental authorities for denouncing the Civil Constitution. It was
impossible to dismiss all the 104 priests of Nantes who did the same, but their
salaries were stopped. Evidently there was to be no peaceful transition to a
new ecclesiastical order, and indignant local authorities bombarded the
Assembly with demands for action. Eventually, on 27 November, action was taken.
The deputies decided, after two days of bitter debate, to dismiss at once all
clerics who did not accept the new order unequivocally. And to test this
acceptance they imposed an oath. All beneficed clergy were to swear after mass
on the first available Sunday ‘to be faithful to the nation, the King and the
law, and to uphold with all their power the constitution declared by the
National Assembly and accepted by the king.’ All who refused were to be
replaced at once through the procedures laid down in the Civil Constitution.
“The French Revolution had many
turning-points: but the oath of the clergy was, if not the greatest,
unquestionably one of them. It was certainly the Constituent Assembly’s most
serious mistake. For the first time the revolutionaries forced fellow citizens
to choose; to declare themselves publicly for or against the new order… With no
word from Rome, the king sanctioned the new decree of 26 December, so that
oath-taking (or refusal) dominated public life throughout the country in
January and February 1791. The clergy in the Assembly themselves set the
pattern, in that they were completely divided. Only 109 took the oath, and only
two bishops, one of them Talleyrand. As the deadline approached on 4 January
the Assembly was surrounded by crowds shouting for nonjurors to be lynched; and
the patriots, led unpersuasively by the Protestant Barnave, used every possible
argument and procedural ploy to sway waverers. But there were none. And faced
with this example from the majority of clerical deputies, it is little wonder
that so many clerics in the country at large became refractories (as nonjurors
were soon being called)… Above all, there was a massive refusal of the oath
throughout the west…In the end, about 54 per cent of the parish clergy took the
oath. This suggests that well over a third of the country was now prepared to
signal that the Revolution had gone far enough…”[302]
There is a bitter irony in these events.
How often, since 1066 and the Investitures Conflict, had Popes bent western
kings to their evil will! However, as present events now demonstrated, these
were pyrrhic victories, which, in weakening the Monarchy, ultimately weakened
the Church, too, in that Church and Monarchy are the two essential pillars of
every Christian society. Right up to the Reformation the Popes had failed to
understand that attacks on the throne were also attacks on the altar, and that
an accusation of “royal despotism” would almost invariably be linked with one
of “episcopal despotism”. The Counter-Reformation Popes were more careful to
respect monarchical authority, and Louis XIV’s abrupt about-turn from
Gallicanism to Ultramontanism witnessed to their continuing influence. But the
constant political intrigues of the Jesuits, which made them a kind of “state
within the state”, led to their being banned by all the governments of Europe
except Russia - a severe blow from which the power of the Popes never fully
recovered and which was an important condition of the success of the
revolution. The Masons and even more radical groups like the “Illuminati” (see
below) were quick to take the place of the Jesuits as the main threat to
established authority, while using the Jesuits’ methods and organisation. And
now, at the end of the eighteenth century, when papism was in full retreat
before the onslaught of enlightened despots like Joseph II and revolutionary
democrats like the French National Assembly, and the Popes were desperately in
need of the support of “Most Catholic Kings” such as Louis XVI, they paid the
price for centuries of papal anti-monarchism.
Burke versus Paine
The ideas of the French revolution posed a
great threat to the British, who prided themselves on being the home of
liberty, but who saw that French revolutionary “liberty” would speedily destroy
their own. Already the Americans had shown that libertarianism and empire made
an uncomfortable fit; and the fit would look still worse in India and Ireland.
At home, too, there were some who, seeing the first effects of the industrial
revolution on the industrial poor, and that England’s “green and pleasant land”
was in danger of becoming overwhelmed by “dark, satanic mills”, concluded that
Britain was by no means a free and equal society, and that the ideas of
Rousseau (who had lived for some years in Shropshire) were applicable beyond
the frontiers of France. “’Two causes, and only two, will rouse a peasantry to
rebellion,’ opined Robert Southey, a radical turned Tory: ‘intolerable
oppression, or religious zeal’. But that moderately comforting scenario no
longer applied: ‘A manufacturing poor is more easily instigated to revolt: they
have no local attachments… they know enough of what is passing in the political
world to think themselves politicians’. England’s rulers must pay heed: ‘If the
manufacturing system continues to be extended, I believe that revolution
inevitably must come, and in its most fearful shape’.”[303]
The first ideological attack on the French
revolution came from the great Anglo-Irish orator Edmund Burke, who had adopted
a liberal position on America and Ireland, but who now became the
standard-bearer of anti-revolutionary conservatism. His Reflexions on the
Revolution in France (November, 1790) foresaw saw that the French
revolution would bring in its train, not freedom, but tyranny, and precisely
because of, rather than in spite of, its populist character. For “the tyranny
of a multitude,” he wrote, “is a multiplied tyranny”.[304]
Of course, Burke’s reflections were those of a parliamentarian rather than of a
monarchist in the real sense. But he agreed with the Catholic monarchist Joseph
de Maistre in calling the revolution “satanic”. And, as we have seen, he called
the war that broke out between revolutionary France and Britain in 1793 “a
religious war”. For truly, the war between the revolution and its opponents was
a religious war, a war between two fundamentally opposed ideas of who rules
human society: God or the people.
Burke laid great emphasis on the
importance of tradition and the organic forms of social life, which was
important at a time when the rage was all for the destruction of everything
that was old and venerable. In this respect (although not in others) he went
against one of the main presuppositions of the English social contract
theorists, following rather in the line of thought of the German
Counter-Enlightenment thinkers Hamann and Herder. As Berlin writes: “Burke’s
famous onslaughts on the principles of the French revolutionaries was founded
upon the selfsame appeal to the myriad strands that bind human beings into a
historically hallowed whole, contrasted with the utilitarian model of society
as a trading-company held together by contractual obligations, the world of
‘sophisters, oeconomists, and calculators’ who are blind and deaf to the
unanalysable relationships that make a family, a tribe, a nation, a movement,
any association of human beings held together by something more than a quest
for mutual advantage, or by force, or by anything that is not mutual love,
loyalty, common history, emotion and outlook.”[305]
Society exists over several generations,
so why should only one generation’s interests be respected in drawing up the
social contract? For, as Roger Scruton writes, interpreting the thought of
Burke, “the social contract prejudices the interests of those who are not alive
to take part in it: the dead and the unborn. Yet they too have a claim, maybe
an indefinite claim, on the resources and institutions over which the living so
selfishly contend. To imagine society as a contract among its living members,
is to offer no rights to those who go before and after. But when we neglect those
absent souls, we neglect everything that endows law with its authority, and
which guarantees our own survival. We should therefore see the social order as
a partnership, in which the dead and the unborn are included with the living.”[306]
“Every people,” writes L.A. Tikhomirov,
“is, first of all, a certain historical whole, a long row of consecutive
generations, living over hundreds or thousands of years in a common life handed
down by inheritance. In this form a people, a nation, is a certain socially
organic phenomenon with more or less clearly expressed laws of inner
development… But political intriguers and the democratic tendency does not look
at a people in this form, as a historical, socially organic phenomenon, but
simply in the form of a sum of the individual inhabitants of the country.
This is the second point of view, which looks on a nation as a simple
association of people united into a state because they wanted that, living
according to laws which they like, and arbitrarily changing the laws of their
life together when it occurs to them.”[307]
Burke rejected the idea that the French
Revolution was simply the English Revolution writ large. The Glorious
Revolution of 1688 was not a revolution in the new, French sense, because it
left English traditions, including English traditions of liberty, intact: it
“was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and
that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for
law and liberty… We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to
derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers… All the
reformations we have hitherto made, have proceeded upon the principle of
reference to antiquity.”[308]
In fact, far from making the people the sovereign power, the English parliament
in 1688 had sworn “in the name of the people” to “most humbly and faithfully
submit themselves, their heirs and posterities” to the Monarchs William and
Mary “for ever”.
The French Revolution, by contrast,
rejected all tradition. “You had,” he told the French, “the elements of a
constitution very nearly as good as could be wished…; but you chose to act as
if you have never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin
anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to
you.” “Your constitution, it is true,… suffered waste and dilapidation; but you
possessed in some parts the walls and, in all, the foundations of a noble and
venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls; you might have built on
those old foundations. Your constitution was suspended before it was
perfected.” “Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an hour, that
prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years.”[309]
There was in fact nothing new about the French Revolution. It was just another
disaster “brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust,
sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal”. The “rights of man” were just a
“pretext” invented by the “wickedness” of human nature.[310]
“It was Burke’s Reflections,”
writes G.P. Gooch, “which overthrew the supremacy of Locke [for the time
being], and formed the starting-point of a number of schools of thought,
agreeing in the rejection of the individualistic rationalism which had
dominated the eighteenth century. The work is not only the greatest exposition
of the philosophic basis of conservatism ever written, but a declaration of the
principles of evolution, continuity, and solidarity, which must hold their
place in all sound political thinking. Against the omnipotence of the
individual, he sets the collective reason; against the claims of the present,
he sets the accumulated experience of the past; for natural rights he offers
social rights; for liberty he substitutes law. Society is a partnership between
those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.”[311]
Burke, writes Doyle, attributed the fall
of the old order “to a conspiracy. On the one hand were the ‘moneyed interest’,
resentful at their lack of esteem and greedy for new profits; on the other, and
even more important, were the so-called philosophers of the Enlightenment, a
‘literary cabal’ committed to the destruction of Christianity by any and every
available means. The idea of a philosophic conspiracy was not new. It went back
to the only one ever conclusively proved to have existed, the plot of the
self-styled Illuminati to undermine the Church-dominated government of Bavaria.
The Bavarian government published a sensational collection of documents to
illustrate its gravity, and Burke had read it. Although he was not the first to
attribute events in France to conspiracy of the sort thwarted in Bavaria, the
way he included the idea in the most comprehensive denunciation of the
Revolution yet to appear lent it unprecedented authority. Nor was the
destruction of Christianity and the triumph of atheism the only catastrophe he
predicted. Disgusted by the way the ‘Republic of Paris’ and its ‘swinish
multitude’ held the government captive, the provinces would eventually cut
loose and France would fall apart. The assignats would drive out sound
coinage and hasten, rather than avert,
bankruptcy. The only possible end to France’s self-induced anarchy would come
when ‘some popular general, who understand the art of conciliating the
soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of
all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account… the moment
in which that event will happen, the person who really commands the army is
your master.’”[312]
Burke’s Reflexions were answered by
Tom Paine’s Rights of Man, which sold still more copies – an astonishing
250,000 in two years. This debate between two Englishmen, which was eagerly
followed all over Europe, turned out to be the first of the major debates
between “right” and “left” that have dominated European intellectual life since
1789, taking the place of the old Catholic-Protestant polemics. Burke proved to
be more accurate than Paine in its forecasts about the future of the revolution
(he predicted both the killing of the king and the military dictatorship); but
it was to be Paine’s ideas that proved to be the more popular and influential. [313]
Paine admitted that Louis XVI had “natural
moderation”; but the revolution, he argued, was not against people, but
against principles – in particular, the principle of despotism. Of
course, Paine was not to know (although he was soon to find out) that the
French revolution would cause, directly and indirectly, the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of people – including the “naturally moderate” King and
vast numbers of the poorer classes – far more than the ancien régime
had caused in centuries. As for the principle of despotism, he saw it
everywhere, and not only in the King: “When despotism has established itself
for ages in a country, as in France, it is not in the person of the King only
that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nominal
authority; but it is not so in practice, and in fact. It has its standard
everywhere. Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon custom
and usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot. The
original hereditary despotism resident in the person of the King, divides and
subdivides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till at last the whole of
it is acted by deputation. This was the case in France; and against this
species of despotism, proceeding on through an endless labyrinth of office till
the source of it is scarcely perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It
strengthens itself by assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannizes under the
pretence of obeying.
“When a man reflects on the condition
which France was in from the nature of her government, he will see other causes
for revolt than those which immediately connect themselves with the person or
character of Louis XVI. There were, if I may so express it, a thousand
despotisms to be reformed in France, which had grown up under the hereditary
despotism of the monarchy, and became so rooted as to be in a great measure
independent of it. Between the monarchy, the parliament, and the church, there
was a rivalship of despotism, besides the feudal despotism operating
locally, and the ministerial despotism operating everywhere.”[314]
So even the parliament, which had opposed
the King at every turn in the pre-revolutionary period, was despotic! Paine
gives himself away here: his real target is not despotism, but hierarchy,
every relationship in society which involves the submission or obedience of one
person to another. And yet, of course, no society, least of all a revolutionary
society, can exist without hierarchy and obedience.
Paine rejected the role of tradition in
politics as clearly and radically as Luther and Calvin had rejected it in
theology. “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in
all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and
presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent
of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation
property in the generations which are to follow. The parliament or the people
of 1688, or of any other period, has no more right to dispose of the people of
the present day, or to bind or to control those who are to live a hundred or a
thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the
purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that
are to be accomodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease
with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this world,
he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or how
its government shall be organized, or how administered…. I am contending for the
rights of the living, and against their being willed away by the
manuscript assumed authority of the dead…
“The error of those who reason by
precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is, that they do
not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go the whole way. They stop in
some of the intermediate stages of an hundred or a thousand years, and produce
what was then done, as a rule for the present day. This is no authority at all.
If we travel still farther into antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary
opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiquity is to be authority, a
thousand such authorities may be produced, successively contradicting each
other:
“…If the mere name of antiquity is to
govern the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or a thousand
years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of
those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions
of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority against
authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man
at the creation. Here our inquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds
a home. If a dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an
hundred years from the creation, it is to this same source of authority they
must have referred, and it is to the same source of authority that we must now
refer.
“Though I mean not to touch upon any
sectarian principle of religion, yet it may be worth observing, that the
genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam. Why then not trace the rights of man to
the creation of man? I will answer the question. Because there have been
upstart governments, thrusting themselves between, and presumptuously working
to un-make man.
“If any generation of men ever possessed
the right of dictating the mode by which the world should be governed for ever,
it was the first generation that existed; and if that generation did it not, no
succeeding generation can show any authority for doing it, nor can set any up.
The illuminating and divine principle of the equal rights of man, (for it has
its origin from the Maker of man) relates, not only to the living individuals,
but to generations of men succeeding each other. Every generation is equal in
rights to the generations which preceded it, by the same rule that every
individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary.”[315]
Paine had a point. Arguments based on
merely human tradition are relative; one precedent from antiquity is
cancelled out by another. Human tradition needs to be supported by Divine
Tradition – that is, Apostolic Tradition or the state of the first man in
Paradise. Burke had this problem not only in relation to Paine, but also in
relation to other contemporary English radicals. If he claimed that British
liberties “were an entailed inheritance peculiar to the inhabitants of the
island” and going back to William the Conqueror, “his radical opponents, who
were rather less keen on entails, claimed that their rights were derived from
the alleged practices of free-born Englishmen before the days of the ‘Norman
yoke’.”[316] And the
precedent his opponents pointed to was both older and more noble; for, as Paine
pointed out, if any ruler was a despot and usurper, - that is, a destroyer
of tradition - it was William the Conqueror…
Again, since Burke accepted the legitimacy
of both the English and American revolutions (while preferring to rest on their
least revolutionary moments), he could not attack the French revolution from a
position of basic principle (for its principles were not fundamentally
different from those of its Anglo-Saxon predecessors), but only because it
carried those principles “too far”. But if the principle itself is accepted, who
is to say when the application of the principle has gone “too far”? In any
case, both Burke and his English radical opponents (but not Paine) agreed that
the rights they were talking about “did not rest on principle and had no
relevance to foreigners”[317]
- and so had no relevance to the French revolution, either.
And yet Burke was not defending just the
English way of doing things, which was relevant only to Englishmen (in other of
his works he defended the rights of the Irish and the Indians to keep their own
traditions within the British Empire). The French revolution attacked the very
foundation of society – religion. So in defending the Christian religion Burke
was defending a universal principle: “We know, and what is better, we feel
inwardly[318], that
religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all
comfort. In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of
superstition… that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of England would not
prefer to impiety… We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his
constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason,
but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But if… we should uncover
our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian religion which has hitherto been
our boast and comfort, and one great source of civilisation amongst us, and
among many other nations, we are apprehensive (being well aware that the mind
will not endure a void) that some uncouth, pernicious, and degrading superstition
might take the place of it.”[319]
However, the very radicalism of Paine’s
rejection of tradition undermined the validity of his argument. For he accepted
that sovereignty resided in the Nation - and yet what is the Nation if
it has to be constantly re-inventing itself, holding nothing from the past as
sacred and starting again from a tabula rasa with every new generation?
A Nation defines itself precisely by its continuity over time and over many
generations; there must be some loyalty to, and preservation of, the past if
the Nation is to recognise itself as the same Nation throughout its
transformations.
But Paine, true revolutionary that he was,
was as sweeping in his rejection of the temporal, traditional dimension of the
Nation as he was of its spatial, hierarchical dimension. Not surprisingly,
therefore, he had little time for religion, the main guarantor of both the
spatial and the temporal dimensions of society. There was no one, true
religion, for Paine, only conflicting human opinions which he made no attempt
to evaluate: “With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if
everyone is left to judge of his own religion, there is no such thing as a
religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other’s religion,
there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore, all the
world is right, or all the world is wrong…”[320]
“Every religion is good that teaches man to be good”. “I do not believe in the
creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church,
by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know
of. My own mind is my own church.”[321]
Paine was not anti-religious as such; but
in his attitude to religion there was more than a hint of contempt: “All
religions are in their nature kind and benign [!], and united with principles
of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first, by professing
anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral. Like everything
else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by persuasion, exhortation,
and example. How then is it that they lose their native mildness, and become
morose and intolerant?
“It proceeds from the connexion which Mr.
Burke recommends. By engendering the church with the state, a sort of
mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced,
called The Church established by Law. It is a stranger, even from its
birth, to any parent mother on which it is begotten, and whom in time it kicks
out and destroys.”[322]
On this principle, Paine should have been
very happy in America, where he spent his last years, insofar as the American
Constitution made a complete separation between Church and State. But where
there is no persecution from the State, there can still be criticism from
individuals – indeed, that is their right according to Paine’s own principles.
And the Americans criticised him for his Deist views, so that Paine spent his
last years in loneliness and misery.
Thus for Paine neither ancestors nor
kings, neither precedents nor heredity nor any received wisdom, whether
political or theological, was to have any place in his “brave new world” in
which the rootless, atomised individual reigned supreme. But how did he get
from the individual to the Nation, in whom political sovereignty resides? “A
few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain to man in
right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights
of his mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own
comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others.
Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of
society. Every civil right has for its foundation, some natural right
pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual
power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those
which relate to security and protection.”[323]
Here, for all his Rousseauist iconoclasm, Paine
reveals his profoundly non-Rousseauist, Anglo-Saxon individualism. Society
exists for the sake of the individual and his needs, especially his need to be
free from various ills. There is no place in his system for a general
will that is superior to the individual and which forces him to be free to
be himself. “Civil power, properly considered as such, is made up of the
aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes defective
in the individual in point of power, and answers not to his purpose; but when
collected to a focus, becomes competent to the purpose of every one.”[324]
In other words, the State has no special rights of its own over an individual
unless that individual interferes with the rights of other individuals; it
simply exists to service the individual(s), to help him to do things he would
not be able to do on his own.
Paine was more influential than Burke, and
even the stolid and traditionalist British found themselves moving along the
path that he indicated. Thus, as Hampson points out, “it was the British who
moved towards the attitudes proclaimed by the French Revolution… After 1832 it
was conceded that, irrespective of precedent and tradition, whole categories of
Englishmen had a right to vote.”[325]
Moreover, Paine’s vision of a welfare state outlined in part two of The
Rights of Man was to inspire generations of British and American radicals.
And yet, only a year or two after the publication of his famous work, Paine
himself found himself under threat of execution in a Jacobin prison, where he
must have pondered whether Burke had not been right after all…
Illuminism
In order to understand how the French
Revolution passed from its first, democratic and relatively non-violent phase
to the second, proto-communistic and exceedingly bloody phase, it is necessary
to study the history of the secret society known as the “Illuminati”.
Illuminism arose as a kind of parasite feeding on the body of Masonry. Its
appearance was preceded by an astonishing increase in the number of masonic
lodges in France. Zamoyski writes that “there were 104 lodges in France, in
1772, 198 by 1776, and a staggering 629 by 1789. Their membership included
virtually every grandee, writer, artist, lawyer, soldier or other professional
in the country, as well as notable foreigners such as Franklin and Jefferson –
some 30,000 people.”[326]
“Between 800 and 900 masonic lodges,”
writes Doyle, “were founded in France between 1732 and 1793, two-thirds of them
after 1760. Between 1773 and 1779 well over 20,000 members were recruited. Few
towns of any consequence were without one or more lodges by the 1780s and,
despite several papal condemnations of a deistic cult that had originated in
Protestant England, the élite of society flocked to join. Voltaire was
drafted in on his last visit to Paris, and it was before the assembled brethren
of the Nine Sisters Lodge that he exchanged symbolic embraces with Franklin.”[327]
Franklin, as we have seen, was an American
mason, a famous scientist, and a major player in the American revolution in
which French and Americans had co-operated in overthrowing British monarchical
rule. The American revolution had demonstrated that the ideas of the philosophes
were not just philosophical theory, but could be translated into reality. And
the meeting of Franklin and Voltaire showed that science and philosophy could
meet in the womb of Masonry to bring forth the common dream - liberty and “the
pursuit of happiness”.
But just as the American Revolution was
child’s play compared with the savagery and radicalism of the French
Revolution, so these earlier masonic lodges and orders were innocent by
comparison with the profound evil of Illuminism, which was founded on May 1,
1776[328]
by a Bavarian professor called Weishaupt, who assumed the name of “Spartacus”.
It appears to have arisen out of the dissatisfaction of a group of Masons with
the general state of Masonry. Thus another founder member, the famous Count
Mirabeau, noted in his Memoir in the same year of 1776: “The Lodge Theodore de
Bon Conseil at Munich, where there were a few men with brains and hearts, was
tired of being tossed about by the vain promises and quarrels of Masonry. The
heads resolved to graft on to their branch another secret association to which
they gave the name of the Order of the Illuminés. They modelled it on
the Society of Jesus, whilst proposing to themselves diametrically opposed.”[329]
“Our strength,” wrote Weishaupt, “lies in
secrecy. Therefore we must without hesitation use as a cover some innocent
societies. The lodges of blue masonry are a fitting veil to hide our real aims,
since the world is accustomed to expecting nothing important or constructive
from them. Their ceremonies are considered pretty trifles for the amusement of
big children. The name of a learned society is also a magnificent mask behind
which we can hide our lower degrees.”[330]
“Weishaupt
construced his organization on several levels, revealing his most radical plans
only to his chosen co-workers. Weishaupt chose the members of his organization
mainly amidst young people, carefully studying each candidature.
“Having sifted out the unreliable and
dubious, the leaders of the order performed on the rest a rite of consecration,
which took place after a three-day fast in a dark basement. Every candidate was
consecrated separately, having first had his arms and legs bound. [Then] from
various corners of the dark basement the most unexpected questions were
showered upon the initiate.
“Having replied to the questions, he swore
absolute obedience to the leaders of the order. Every new member signed that he
would preserve the secrets of the organization under fear of the death penalty.
“However, the newcomer was not yet
considered to be a full member of the organization, but received the status of
novice and for one to three months had to be under the observation of an
experienced illuminé. He was told to keep a special diary and regularly
present it to the leaders. The novice filled in numerous questionnaires, and
also prepared monthly accounts of all matters linking him with the order.
Having passed through all the trials, the novice underwent a second initiation,
now as a fully fledged member.
“After his initiation the new member was
given a distinguishing sign, gesture and password, which changed depending on
the rank he occupied.
“The newcomer received a special pseudonym
(order’s name), usually borrowed from ancient history…, and got to know an
ancient Persian method of timekeeping, the geography of the order, and also a
secret code.
“Weishaupt imposed into the order a system
of global spying and mutual tailing.
“Most of the members were at the lowest level of the hierarchy.
“No less than a thousand people entered
the organization, but for conspiratorial purposes each member knew only a few
people. As Weishaupt himself noted, ‘directly under me there are to, who are
completely inspired by me myself, while under each of them are two, etc. Thus I
can stir up and put into motion a thousand people. This is how one must command
and act in politics.”[331]
“Do you realize sufficiently,” he wrote in
the discourse of the reception of the ‘Illuminatus Dirigens’, “what it means to
rule – to rule in a secret society? Not only over the lesser or more important
of the populace, but over the best men, over men of all ranks, nations, and
religions, to rule without external force, to unite them indissolubly, to
breathe one spirit and soul into them, men distributed over all parts of the
world?” [332]
The supposed aim of the new Order
was to improve the present system of government and to abolish “the slavery of
the peasants, the servitude of men to the soil, the rights of main morte and
all the customs and privileges which abase humanity, the corvées under
the condition of an equitable equivalent, all the corporations, all the
maîtrises, all the burdens imposed on industry and commerce by customs,
excise duties, and taxes.. to procure a universal toleration for all religious
opinions… to take away all the arms of superstitions, to favour the liberty of
the press, etc.”[333]
This was almost exactly the same programme as that carried out by the
Constituent Assembly at the beginning of the French revolution in 1789-91 under
the leadership of, among others, the same Count Mirabeau – a remarkable
coincidence!
However, this
liberal democratic programme was soon forgotten when Weishaupt took over
control of the Order. For “Spartacus” had elaborated a much more radical
programme, a programme that was to resemble the socialism of the later, more
radical stages of the revolution. “Weishaupt had made into an absolute theory
the misanthropic gibes [boutades] of Rousseau at the invention of
property and society, and without taking into account the statement so
distinctly formulated by Rousseau on the impossibility of suppressing property
and society once they had been established, he proposed as the end of
Illuminism the abolition of property, social authority, of nationality, and the
return of the human race to the happy state in which it formed only a single
family without artificial needs, without useless sciences, every father being
priest and magistrate. Priest of we know not what religion, for in spite of
their frequent invocations of the God of Nature, many indications lead us to
conclude that Weishaupt had, like Diderot and d’Holbach, no other God than
Nature herself…”[334]
Weishaupt proceeded to create an inner
secret circle concealed within Masonry. He used the religious forms of Masonry,
and invented a few “mysteries” himself, but his aim was the foundation of a political
secret organisation controlled by himself. His political theory, according to
Webster, was “no other than that of modern Anarchy, that man should govern
himself and rulers should be gradually done away with. But he is careful to
deprecate all ideas of violent revolution – the process is to be accomplished
by the most peaceful methods. Let us see how gently he leads up to the final
conclusion:
“’The first
stage in the life of the whole human race is savagery, rough nature, in which
the family is the only society, and hunger and thirst are easily satisfied… in
which man enjoys the two most excellent goods, Equality and Liberty, to their
fullest extent. … In these circumstances.. health was his usual condition…
Happy men, who were not yet enough enlightened to lose their peace of mind and
to be conscious of the unhappy mainsprings and causes of our misery, love of
power… envy… illnesses and all the results of imagination.’
“The manner in which man fell from this
primitive state of felicity is then described:
“’As families increased, means of
subsistence began to lack, the nomadic life ceased, property was instituted,
men established themselves firmly, and through agriculture families drew near
each other, thereby language developed and through living together men began to
measure themselves against each other, etc… But here was the cause of the
downfall of freedom; equality vanished. Man felt new unknown needs…’
“Thus men became dependent like minors
under the guardianship of kings; the human must attain to majority and become
self-governing:
“’Why should it be impossible that the
human race should attain to its highest perfection, the capacity to guide
itself? Why should anyone be eternally led who understands how to lead
himself?’
“Further, men must learn not only to be
independent of kings but of each other:
“’Who has need of another depends on him
and has resigned his rights. So to need little is the first step to freedom;
therefore savages and the most highly enlightened are perhaps the only free
men. The art of more and more limiting one’s needs is at the same time the art
of attaining freedom…’
“Weishaupt then goes on to show how the
further evil of Patriotism arose:
“’With the origin of nations and peoples
the world ceased to be a great family, a single kingdom: the great tie of
nature was torn… Nationalism took the place of human love…. Now it became a
virtue to magnify one’s fatherland at the expense of whoever was not enclosed
within its limits, now as a means to this narrow end it was allowed to despise
and outwit foreigners or indeed even to insult them. This virtue was called
Patriotism…’
“And so by narrowing down affection to one’s
fellow-citizens, the members of one’s own family, and even to oneself:
“’There arose out of Patriotism, Localism,
the family spirit, and finally Egoism… Diminish Patriotism, then men will learn
to know each other again as such, their dependence on each other will be lost,
the bond of union will widen out…’
“… Whilst the ancient religions taught the
hope of a Redeemer who should restore man to his former state, Weishaupt looks
to man alone for his restoration. ‘Men,’ he observes, ‘no longer loved men but
only such and such men. The word was quite lost…’ Thus in Weishaupt’s masonic
system the ‘lost word’ is ‘Man,’ and its recovery is interpreted by the idea
that Man should find himself again. Further on Weishaupt goes on to show how
‘the redemption of the human race is to be brought about’:
“’These means are secret schools of
wisdom, these were from all time the archives of Nature and of human rights,
through them will Man be saved from his Fall, princes and nations will
disappear without violence from the earth, the human race will become one
family and the world the abode of reasonable men. Morality alone will bring
about this change imperceptibly. Every father of a family will be, as formerly
Abraham and the patriarchs, the priest and unfettered lord of his family, and
Reason will be the only code of Man. This is one of our greatest secrets…’
“… His first idea was to make Fire Worship
the religion of Illuminism; the profession of Christianity therefore appears to
have been an after-thought. Evidently Weishaupt discovered, as others have
done, that Christianity lends itself more readily to subversive ideas than any
other religion. And in the passages which follow we find adopting the old ruse
of representing Christ as a Communist and as a secret-society adept. Thus he
goes on to explain that ‘if Jesus preaches contempt of riches, He wishes to
teach us the reasonable use of them and prepare for the community of goods
introduced by Him,’ and in which, Weishaupt adds later, He lived with His
disciples. But this secret doctrine is only to be apprehended by initiates…
“Weishaupt thus contrives to give a purely
political interpretation to Christ’s teaching:
“’The secret preserved through the
Disciplinam Arcani, and the aim appearing through all His words and deeds, is
to give back to men their original liberty and equality… Now one can understand
how far Jesus was the Redeemer and Saviour of the world.’
“The mission of Christ was therefore by
means of Reason to make men capable of freedom: ‘When at last reason becomes
the religion of man, so will the problem be solved.’
“Weishaupt goes on to show that
Freemasonry can be interpreted in the same manner. The secret doctrine
concealed in the teaching of Christ was handed down by initiates who ‘hid
themselves and their doctrine under the cover of Freemasonry,’ and in a long
explanation of Masonic hieroglyphics he indicates the analogies between the
Hiramic legend and the story of Christ. ‘I say then Hiram is Christ.’… In this
manner Weishaupt demonstrates that ‘Freemasonry is hidden Christianity… But
this is of course only the secret of what Weishaupt calls ‘real Freemasonry’ in
contradistinction to the official kind, which he regards as totally
unenlightened.”[335]
But the whole of this religious side of
Weishaupt’s system is in fact simply a ruse, a cover, by which to attract
religious men. Weishaupt himself despised religion: “You cannot imagine,” he
wrote, “what consideration and sensation our Priest’s degree is arousing. The
most wonderful thing is that great Protestant and reformed theologians who
belong to Q [Illuminism] still believe that the
religious teaching imparted in it contains the true and genuine spirit of the
Christian religion. Oh! men, of what cannot you be persuaded? I never thought
that I should become the founder of a new religion.”[336]
Only gradually, and only to a very few of
his closest associates, did Weishaupt reveal the real purpose of his order –
the revolutionary overthrow of the whole of society, civil and religious.
Elements of all religions and philosophical systems, including Christianity and
Masonry, were used by Weishaupt to enrol a body of influential men (about 2500
at one time[337]) who
would obey him in all things while knowing neither him personally nor the real
aims of the secret society they had been initiated into.
Weishaupt was well on the way to taking
over Freemasonry (under the guise of its reform) when, in July, 1785, an
Illuminatus was struck by lightning and papers found on him led to the Bavarian
government banning the organisation. However, both Illuminism and Weishaupt
continued in existence – only France rather than Germany became the centre of
their operations. Thus the Parisian lodge of the Amis Réunis, renamed the
Ennemis Réunis, gathered together all the really radical Masons from
various other lodges, many of which were still royalist, and turned them, often
unconsciously, into agents of Weishaupt. These adepts included no less than
thirty princes. For it was characteristic of the revolution that among those
who were most swept up by the madness of its intoxication were those who stood
to lose most from it.
Some far-sighted men, such as the
Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna and the Marquis de Luchet, warned against Illuminism,
and de Luchet predicted almost exactly the course of events that the revolution
would take on the basis of his knowledge of the order. But no one paid any
attention. In October, 1789 a pamphlet was seized in the house of the wife of
Mirabeau’s publisher among Mirabeau’s papers and published two years later.
“Beginning with a diatribe against the
French monarchy,” writes Webster, “the document goes on to say that ‘in order
to triumph over this hydra-headed monster these are my ideas’:
“’We must overthrow all order, suppress
all laws, annul all power, and leave the people in anarchy. The law we
establish will not perhaps be in force at once, but at any rate, having given
back the power to the people, they will resist for the sake of the liberty
which they will believe they are preserving. We must caress their vanity,
flatter their hopes, promise them happiness after our work has been in
operation; we must elude their caprices and their systems at will, for the
people as legislators are very dangerous, they only establish laws which
coincide with their passions, their want of knowledge would besides only give
birth to abuses. But as the people are a lever which legislators can move at
their will, we must necessarily use them as a support, and render hateful to
them everything we wish to destroy and sow illusions in their path; we must
also buy all the mercenary pens which propagate our methods and which will
instruct the people concerning their enemies which we attack. The clergy, being
the most powerful through public opinion, can only be destroyed by ridiculing
religion, rendering its ministers odious, and only representing them as
hypocritical monsters… Libels must at every moment show fresh traces of hatred
against the clergy. To exaggerate their riches, to makes the sins of an
individual appear to be common to all, to attribute to them all vices; calumny,
murder, irreligion, sacrilege, all is permitted in times of revolution.’
“’We must degrade the noblesse and
attribute it to an odious origin, establish a germ of equality which can never
exist but which will flatter the people; [we must] immolate the most obstinate,
burn and destroy their property in order to intimidate the rest, so that if we
cannot entirely destroy this prejudice we can weaken it and the people will
avenge their vanity and their jealousy by all the excesses which will bring
them to submission.’
“After describing how the soldiers are to
be seduced from their allegiance, and the magistrates represented to the people
as despots, ‘since the people, brutal and ignorant, only see the evil and never
the good of things,’ the writer explains they must be given only limited power
in the municipalities.
“’Let us beware above all of giving them
too much force; their despotism is too dangerous, we must flatter the people by
gratuitous justice, promise them a great diminution in taxes and a more equal
division, more extension in fortunes, and less humiliation. These phantasies [vertiges]
will fanaticise the people, who will flatten out all resistance. What matter
the victims and their numbers? Spoliations, destructions, burnings, and all the
necessary effects of a revolution? Nothing must be sacred and we can say with
Machiavelli: “What matter the means as long as one arrives at the end?”’”[338]
The early phase of the revolution appears
to have been driven by the more idealistic kind of Freemasons – men such as the
Duc d’Orléans. But its later stages were controlled by the Illuminati
with their more radically destructive plans. Thus “according to Lombard de
Langres [writing in 1820]: ’France in 1789 counted more than 2,000 lodges
affiliated to the Grand Orient; the number of adepts was more than 100,000. The
first events of 1789 were only Masonry in action. All the revolutionaries of
the Constituent Assembly were initiated into the third degree. We place in this
class the Duc d’Orléans, Valence, Syllery, Laclos, Sièyes,
Pétion, Menou, Biron, Montesquiou, Fauchet, Condorcet, Lafayette,
Mirabeau, Garat, Rabaud, Dubois-Crancé, Thiébaud,
Larochefoucauld, and others.’
“Amongst these others [continues Webster]
were not only the Brissotins, who formed the nucleus of the Girondin party, but
the men of the Terror – Marat, Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins.
“It was these fiercer elements, true
disciples of the Illuminati, who were to sweep away the visionary Masons
dreaming of equality and brotherhood. Following the precedent set by Weishaupt,
classical pseudonyms were adopted by these leaders of the Jacobins, thus Chaumette
was known as Anaxagoras, Clootz as Anacharsis, Danton as Horace, Lacroix as
Publicola, and Ronsin as Scaevola; again, after the manner of the Illuminati,
the names of towns were changed and a revolutionary calendar was adopted. The
red cap and loose hair affected by the Jacobins appear also to have been
foreshadowed in the lodges of the Illuminati.
“Yet faithfully as the Terrorists carried
out the plan of the Illuminati, it would seem that they themselves were not
initiated into the innermost secrets of the conspiracy. Behind the Convention,
behind the clubs, behind the Revolutionary Tribunal, there existed, says
Lombard de Langres, that ‘most secret convention [convention
sécrétissime] which directed everything after May 31, an
occult and terrible power of which the other Convention became the slave and
which was composed of the prime initiates of Illuminism. This power was above
Robespierre and the committees of the government,… it was this occult power
which appropriated to itself the treasures of the nation and distributed them
to the brothers and friends who had helped on the great work.’”[339]
Illuminism represents perhaps the first
clearly organised expression of that philosophy which Hieromonk Seraphim Rose
called “the Nihilism of Destruction”.[340]
Fr. Seraphim considered that this philosophy was unique to the twentieth
century; but the evidence for its existence already in the eighteenth century
is overwhelming. With Illuminism, therefore, we enter for the first time into
the characteristically horrific atmosphere of the twentieth-century
totalitarian revolutions....
The Jacobin Terror
In June, 1791 Louis XVI tried,
unsuccessfully, to flee abroad, and in August the monarchs of Austria and
Prussia met at Pillnitz to co-ordinate action against the Revolution. Gustavus
Adolphus of Sweden and Catherine of Russia also prepared to crush the
“orang-outangs of Europe”. From the summer of 1791 to the summer of 1792 power
steadily slipped away from the elected Constituent Assembly, which was still
broadly in favour of a constitutional monarchy, and into the hands of the mob,
or the Paris Commune. Their passionate hatred of refractory priests and
monarchists inside the country was inflamed by the first attempts of the
foreign powers to invade France and restore legitimate authority from outside.
The rhetoric became increasingly bloody.
Thus on April 25, 1792 the “Marseillaise” was composed for the army of the
Rhine; “impure blood, it exulted, would drench the tracks of the conquering
French armies.”[341]
And on the same day the new invention of the Guillotine claimed its first
victim…
On June 20 the mob or “sansculottes”
(without breeches), invaded the Tuileries. “By sheer weight of numbers,” writes
Zamoyski, “the crowd pushed through the gates of the royal palace and came face
to face with Louis XVI in one of the upstairs salons, where the defenceless
monarch had to endure the abuse of the mob. Pistols and drawn sabres were waved
in his face, and he was threatened with death. More significantly, he was made
to don a red cap [symbol of the revolution] and drink the health of the nation
– and thereby to acknowledge its sovereignty. By acquiescing, he toasted
himself off the throne.”[342]
For a brief moment, on July 14, the third
anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, it looked as if constitutional
monarchy could be saved. Louis was called
“king of the French” and “father of his country”. But on the same day
Marie Antoinette’s nephew, Francis II, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in
Frankfurt in a ceremony that reaffirmed with great splendour the principle of
autocratic monarchy. Between the revolution celebrated in France and the
autocracy celebrated in Germany there could be no permanent compromise. The
centre, constitutional monarchy, could not hold…
Pressure mounted on the Assembly to
declare the dethronement of the king. Finally, on August 10, the Tuileries was
again invaded, 600 Swiss guards were brutally massacred, and the king was
imprisoned. The Assembly “had little alternative but to ‘invite’ the French
people to form a convention ‘to assure the sovereignty of the people and the
reign of liberty and equality. The next day it decreed that the new assembly
was to be elected by manhood suffrage, without distinction between citizens.
Only servants and the unemployed had no vote.”[343]
Paris was ruled by the mob now. In
September the prisons were opened and suspected royalists were slaughtered. On
September 20 the Prussian army (led by the Duke of Brunswick, the leader of
German Masonry) was defeated at Valmy, and the next day the monarchy was
officially abolished.
The newly elected Convention’s task was to
legislate for a new republican Constitution. It was divided between
“Montagnards” (Jacobins) on the left, led by Marat, Danton, Robespierre and the
Parisian delegates, and the “Girondins” on the right, led by Brissot, Vergniaud
and the “faction of the Gironde”. The Montagnards were identified with the
interests of the Paris mob and the most radical ideas of the Revolution; the
Girondins – with the interests of the provinces and the original liberal ideals
of 1789. The Montagnards stood for disposing of the king as soon as possible;
the Girondins wanted a referendum of the whole people to decide.
The Montagnard Saint-Just said that a
trial was unnecessary; the people had already judged the king on August 10; it
remained only to punish him. For “there is no innocent reign… every King is a
rebel and a usurper.”[344]
Robespierre agreed: “Louis cannot be judged, he has already been judged. He has
been condemned, or else the Republic is not blameless. To suggest putting Louis
XVI on trial, in whatever way, is a step back towards royal and constitutional
despotism; it is a counter-revolutionary idea; because it puts the Revolution
itself in the dock. After all, if Louis can still be put on trial, Louis can be
acquitted; he might be innocent. Or rather, he is presumed to be until he is
found guilty. But if Louis can be presumed innocent, what becomes of the
Revolution?”[345]
There was a certain logic in these words:
since the Revolution undermined all the foundations of the ancien
régime, the possibility that the head of that régime might be
innocent implied that the Revolution might be guilty and the trial itself
illegal. So “revolutionary justice” required straight execution rather than a
trial; it could not afford to question the foundations of the Revolution
itself. It was the same logic that led to the execution without trial of Tsar
Nicholas II in 1917.
But the majority of the deputies were not
yet as “advanced” in their thinking as Robespierre. So “during the third week
of January 1793,” writes Ridley, “the Convention voted four times on the issue.
A resolution finding Louis guilty of treason, and rejecting the idea of an
appeal to the people by a plebiscite [so much for Rousseauist democracy!], was
carried by 426 votes to 278; the decision to impose the death penalty was
carried by 387 to 314. Philippe Egalité [the Duke of Orléans and
cousin of the king who became Grand Master of the Masons, then a Jacobin,
renouncing his title for the name ‘Philippe Egalité] voted to convict
Louis and for the death penalty. A deputy then proposed that the question of
what to do with Louis should be postponed indefinitely. This was defeated by
361 to 360, a single vote. Philippe Egalité voted against the proposal,
so his vote decided the issue. On 20 January a resolution that the death
sentence should be immediately carried out was passed by 380 to 310, and Louis
was guillotined the next day.”[346]
After the execution a huge old man with a
long beard who had been prominent in the murdering of priests during the
September riots mounted the scaffold, plunged both hands into the kind’s blood
and sprinkled the people with it, shouting: “People of France! I baptise you in
the name of Jacob and Freedom!”[347]
“Traditionally,” writes Zamoyski, “the
death of a king of France was announced with the phrase: ‘Le Roi est mort,
vive le Roi!’, in order to stress the continuity of the institution of monarchy.
When the king’s head, was held aloft on that sunless day, the crowd assembled
around the scaffold shouted: ‘Vive la Nation!’ The message was
unequivocal. The nation had replaced the king as the sovereign and therefore as
the validating element in the state. The dead king’s God had been superseded by
‘Our Lord Mankind’, to use the words of one prominent revolutionary.”[348]
“The condemnation of the king,” wrote
Camus, “is the crux of contemporary history. It symbolizes the secularization
of our history and the disincarnation of the Christian God. Up to now, God
played a part in history through the medium of kings. But His representative in
history has been killed…”[349]
The execution of the king was the signal
for the abandonment of all restraint. The cause of the Revolution became the
absolute value to which every other value was to be subordinated and
sacrificed. In February, 1793, after the British broke off relations because of
the execution of the king, the Convention declared war on the British and the
Dutch, and in effect “bade defiance to the whole of Europe. ‘They threaten you
with kings!’ roared Danton to the Convention. ‘You have thrown down your
gauntlet to them, and this gauntlet is a king’s head, the signal of their
coming death.’ ‘We cannot be calm,’ claimed the ever-bombastic Brissot, ‘until
Europe, all Europe, is in flames.’ In token of this defiance, annexations were
now vigorously pursued…”[350]
No matter that the Declaration of the
Rights of Man had declared for the freedom of every nation: revolutionary
casuistry interpreted sovereignty to be the right only of revolutionary
nations; all others deserved to become slaves of the Republic.
Moreover, on December 15, 1792 “generals
were authorized in all occupied territories to introduce the full social
programme of the French Republic. All existing taxes, tithes, feudal dues, and
servitudes were to be abolished. So was nobility, and all types of privilege.
The French motto would be, declared some deputies, War on the castles, peace
to the cottages! In the name of peace, help, fraternity, liberty and
equality, they would assist all people to establish ‘free and popular’
governments, with whom they would then co-operate.”[351]
But practice did not match theory. Thus
when Holland was conquered by the revolutionary armies, “it was compelled to
cede various southern territories, including control of the mouth of the
Scheldt, and pay for the upkeep of a French occupying army of 25,000 men.
Finally, it was forced to conclude an alliance with the French Republic whose
chief attraction was to place the supposedly formidable Dutch navy in the
balance against Great Britain. This, then, was what the fraternity and help of
the French Republic actually meant: total subordination to French needs and
purposes.”[352]
Imperialism abroad was matched by
despotism at home, forced conscription and crippling taxes. And now for the
first time there was massive resistance. First came the peasant
counter-revolution in the western regions of Brittany and the Vendée,
which was crushed with the loss of about 250,000 lives, many times more than
were claimed by the guillotine. At about the same time the revolutionary army
under Dumouriez was defeated by the Austrians at Neerwinden. Dumouriez then changed
sides, and it was only the army’s refusal to co-operate that prevented him from
marching on Paris to restore the constitution of 1791 with Louis XVII as king.[353]
The peasant revolt in the Vendée
was by far the most serious and prolonged that the revolutionaries had to face,
and it is significant that it was fought under the banner of the restoration of
the king and the Church. The rebels wore “sacred hearts, crosses, and the white
cockade of royalism. ‘Long live the king and our good priests,’ was their cry.
‘We want our king, our priests and the old regime.’”[354]
However, the counter-revolution in other
parts of the country, and especially among the bourgeoisie of such large
cities as Marseilles, Lyons and Bourdeaux, was less principled and therefore much
less effective. As one general reported of the Bordelais: “They appeared to me
determined not to involve themselves in Parisian affairs, but more determined
still to retain their liberty, their property, their opulence… They don’t want
a king: they want a republic, but a rich and tranquil republic.”[355]
This difference in motivation between
different parts of the counter-revolution, and the failure of many of its
leaders to condemn the revolution in toto and as such, and not
just some of its wilder excesses, doomed it to failure in the long term (much
the same was to happen in Russia in 1918). As long as the revolutionaries held
the centre, and were able to use the methods of terror and mass conscription to
send large armies into the field against their enemies, the advantage lay with
them. And their position was strengthened still further by the coup against the
Girondist deputies effected between May 31 and June 2, 1793.
“In July 1793,” writes Ridley, “a young
Girondin woman, Charlotte Corday, gained admission to Marat’s house by
pretending that she wished to give him a list of names of Girondins to be
guillotined. She found him sitting as usual in his bath to cure his skin
disease, and she stabbed him to death. She was guillotined, and the Girondin
party was suppressed.
“In Lyons, the Girondins had gained
control of the Freemasons’ lodges. In the summer of 1793 the Girondins there
defied the authority of the Jacobin government in Paris, and guillotined one of
the local Jacobin leaders. The Lyons Freemasons played a leading part in the
rising against the Paris Jacobins; but the Jacobins suppressed the revolt, and
several of the leading Girondin Freemasons of Lyons were guillotined.”[356]
This suppression of the Freemasons, the
original movers of the revolution, by more extreme forces that came later was
to be repeated in the Russian revolution. The next stage of the revolution,
after the death of Robespierre, was to see a return of their influence. This,
too, was a pattern that was to be repeated in the Russian revolution (when the
Mason Yeltsin came to power in 1991).
Now the Terror went into overdrive. The
guillotine was used to eliminate traitors, backsliders, suspects, speculators
and “egoists”. “The spirit of moderation,” declared Leclerc, needed to be
expunged.[357] On
September 17 a comprehensive Law of Suspects was passed, which empowered watch
committees “to arrest anyone who ‘either by their conduct, their contacts,
their words or their writings, showed themselves to be supporters of tyranny,
of federalism, or to be enemies of liberty’, as well as a number of more
specific categories such as former nobles ‘who have not constantly manifested
their attachment to the revolution.’ Practically anybody might fall foul of
such a sweeping law. In the weeks following even everyday speech acquired a
sansculotte style. Those who refused to call each other ‘citizen’ rather than
the deferential ‘Monsieur’, and to use the familiar form of address (tutoiement),
fell under automatic suspicion. Then on 29 September the Convention passed a
General Maximum Law which imposed price controls on a wide range of goods
defined as of first necessity from food and drink to fuel, clothing, and even
tobacco. Those who sold them above the maximum would be fined and placed on the
list of suspects. The Revolutionary Army was at last set on foot…”[358]
The Committee of Public Safety now took
over control of the government, subject only to the oversight of the
Convention. This anti-democratic move was said to be temporary and justified by
the emergency situation. “It is impossible,” said Saint-Just in the Committee’s
name, “for revolutionary laws to be executed if the government itself is not
constituted in a revolutionary way.”[359]
The revolutionary government now took
terrible revenge on its defeated enemies. On October 12 the Committee “moved a
decree that Lyons should be destroyed. Its very name was to disappear, except
on a monument among the ruins which would proclaim ‘Lyons made war on Liberty.
Lyons is no more.’”[360]
Lyons was not completely destroyed, but whole ranges of houses were burnt and
thousands were guillotined and shot. “The effect… was designed to be a salutory
one. ‘What cement for the Revolution,’ gloated Achard in a letter to Paris.”[361]
In order to carry out its totalitarian
programme of control of the whole population, the government issued
“certificates of civisme – identity cards and testimonials of public
reliability all in one. Originally only foreigners had been required to carry
these documents, but the Law of Suspects made the requirement general [thereby
showing that for the revolutionary government all citizens were aliens]. Those
without them were liable to arrest and imprisonment; and in fact up to half a
million people may have been imprisoned as suspects of one sort or another
during the Terror. Up to 10,000 may have died in custody, crowded into prisons
never intended for such numbers, or makeshift quarters no better equipped.
These too deserve to be numbered among the victims of the Terror, although not
formally condemned. So do those who were murdered or lynched without trial or
official record during the chaotic, violent autumn of 1793, when the supreme
law of public safety seemed to override more conventional and cumbersome procedures.
Altogether the true total of those who died under the Terror may have been
twice the official figure – around 30,000 people in just under a year… Nor is
it true that most of those killed in the Terror were members of the former
‘privileged orders’, whatever the Revolution’s anti-aristocratic rhetoric might
suggest. Of the official death sentences passed, less than 9 per cent fell upon
nobles, and less than 7 per cent on the clergy. Disproportionately high as
these figures may have been relative to the numbers of these groups in the
population as a whole, they were not as high as the quarter of the Terror’s
victims who came from the middle classes. And the vast majority of those who
lost their lives in the proscriptions of 1793-4 – two-thirds of those
officially condemned and doubtless a far higher proportion of those who
disappeared unofficially – were ordinary people caught up in tragic
circumstances not of their own making, who made wrong choices in lethal times,
when indifference itself counted as a crime.”[362]
Political terror was accompanied by
religious terror. Thus the arrival in the Nièvre in September, 1793 of
the representative Fouché “transformed it into a beacon of religious
terror. Fouché, himself a former priest, came from the Vendée,
where he had witnessed the ability of the clergy to inspire fanatical
resistance to the Revolution’s authority. Christianity, he concluded, could not
coexist in any form with the Revolution and, brushing aside what was left of
the ‘constitutional’ Church, he inaugurated a civic religion of his own
devising with a ‘Feast of Brutus’ on 22 September at which he denounced
‘religious sophistry’. Fouché particularly deplored clerical celibacy:
it set the clergy apart, and in any case made no contribution to society’s need
for children. Clerics who refused to marry were ordered to adopt and support
orphans or aged citizens. The French people, Fouché declared in a
manifesto published on 10 October, recognized no other cult but that of
universal morality; and although the exercise of all creeds was proclaimed to
be free and equal, none might henceforth be practised in public. Graveyards
should exhibit no religious symbols, and at the gate of each would be an
inscription Death is an eternal sleep. Thus began the movement known as
dechristianization. Soon afterwards Fouché moved on to Lyons; but during
his weeks in Nevers his work had been watched by Chaumette, visiting his native
town from Paris. He was to carry the idea back to the capital, where it was
energetically taken up by his colleagues at the commune.
“Other representatives on mission,
meanwhile, had also taken to attacking the outward manifestations of the
Catholic religion. At Abbeville, on the edge of priest-ridden Flanders, Dumont
favoured forced public abjuration of orders, preferably by constitutional
clergy whose continued loyalty to the Revolution could only now be proved by
such gestures. On October 7 in Rheims, Ruhl personally supervised the smashing
of the phial holding the sacred oil of Clovis used to anoint French kings. None
of this was authorized by the Convention: on the other hand the adoption on 5
October of a new republican calendar marked a further stage in the divorce
between the French State and any sort of religion. Years would no longer be
numbered from the birth of Christ, but from the inauguration of the French
Republic on 22 September 1792. Thus it
was already the Year II. There would be twelve thirty-day months with
evocative, seasonal names; each month would have three ten-day weeks (décades)
ending in a rest-day (décadi). Sundays therefore disappeared and
could not be observed unless they coincided with the less-frequent décadis.
The introduction of the system at this moment only encouraged representatives
on mission to intensify their lead; and dechristianization became an important
feature of the Terror in all the former centres of rebellion when they were
brought to heel. Once launched it was eminently democratic. Anybody could join
in smashing images, vandalizing churches (the very word was coined to describe
this outburst of iconoclasm), and theft of vestments to wear in blasphemous
mock ceremonies. Those needing pretexts could preach national necessity when
they tore down bells or walked off with plate that could be recast into guns or
coinage. Such activities were particular favourites among the Revolutionary
Armies. The Parisian detachments marching to Lyons left a trail of pillaged and
closed churches, and smouldering bonfires of ornaments, vestments, and holy
pictures all along their route. Other contributions took more organization, but
Jacobin clubs and popular societies, not to mention local authorities, were
quite happy to orchestrate festivals of reason, harmony, wisdom, and other such
worthy attributes to former churches; and to recruit parties of priests who, at
climactic moments in these ceremonies, would renounce their vows and declare
themselves ready to marry. If their choice fell on a former nun, so much the
better.
“When Chaumetter returned from Nevers, the
Paris Commune made dechristianization its official policy. On 23 October the
images of kings on the front of Notre-Dame were ordered to be removed: the
royal tombs at Saint-Denis had already been emptied and desecrated by order of
the Convention in August. The word Saint began to be removed from street
names, and busts of Marat replaced religious statues. Again the Convention
appeared to be encouraging the trend when it decreed, on 20 October, that any
priest (constitutional or refractory) denounced for lack of civisme by
six citizens would be subject to deportation, and any previously sentenced to
deportation but found in France should be executed. Clerical dress was now
forbidden in Paris, and on 7 November Gobel, the elected constitutional bishop,
who had already sanctioned clerical marriage for his clergy, came with eleven
of them to the Convention and ceremonially resigned his see. Removing the
episcopal insignia, he put on a cap of liberty and declared that the only
religion of a free people should be that of Liberty and Equality. In the next
few days the handful of priests who were deputies followed his example. Soon
Grégoire, constitutional bishop of Blois, was the only deputy left
clinging to his priesthood and clerical dress. The sections meanwhile were
passing anti-clerical motions, and on 12 November that of Gravilliers, whose
idol had so recently been Jacques Roux, sent a deputation to the Convention
draped in ‘ornaments from churches in their district, spoils taken from the
superstitious credulity of our forefathers and repossessed by the reason of
free men’ to announce that all churches in the section had been closed. This
display followed a great public ceremony held in Notre-Dame, or the ‘Temple of
Reason’, as it was now redesignated, on the tenth. On this occasion relays of
patriotic maidens in virginal white paraded reverently before a temple of
philosophy erected where the high altar had stood. From it emerged, at the
climax of the ceremony, a red-capped female figure representing Liberty. Appreciatively
described by an official recorder of the scene as ‘a masterpiece of nature’, in
daily life she was an actress; but in her symbolic role she led the officials
of the commune to the Convention, where she received the fraternal embrace of
the president and secretaries.
“However carefully choreographed, there
was not much dignity about these posturings; and attacks on parish churches and
their incumbents (who were mostly now popularly elected) risked making the
Revolution more enemies than friends. Small-town and anti-religious Jacobin
zeal, for example, provoked a minor revolt in the Brie in the second week in
December. To shouts of Long live the Catholic Religion, we want our priests,
we want the Mass on Sundays and Holy Days, crowds of peasants sacked the
local club. Several thousands took up arms and joined the movement, and only a
force of National Guards and sansculottes from the Revolutionary Army restored
order in a district whose tranquillity was vital to the regular passage of food
supplies to the capital from southern Champagne. But even before this the
Committee of Public Safety was growing anxious about the counter-productive
effects of dechristianization. Robespierre in particular, who believed that
religious faith was indispensable to orderly, civilized society, sounded the
alarm. On November 21 he denounced anti-religious excesses at the Jacobin club.
They smacked of more fanaticism than they extinguished. The people believed in
a Supreme Being, he warned, whereas atheism was aristocratic.[363]
At the same time he persuaded the Committee to circularize popular societies
warning them not to fan superstition and fanaticism by persecution. On 6
December, finally, the Convention agreed to reiterate the principle of
religious freedom in a decree which formally prohibited all violence or threats
against the ‘liberty of cults’. But by then it was too late. The example of
Paris had encouraged Jacobin zealots everywhere, and with the repression of
revolt in full swing and the role of priests in the Vendée particularly
notorious, the remaining trappings of religion were too tempting a target to
ignore. The commune’s response to Robespierre on 23 November had been to decree
the closing of all churches in the capital; and soon local authorities were
shutting them wholesale throughout the country. By the spring, churches were
open for public worship only in the remotest corners of France, such as the
Jura mountains. By then, perhaps 20,000 priests had been bullied into giving up
their status, and 6,000 had given their renunciation the ultimate confirmation
by marrying. In some areas, such as Provence, dechristianization only reached
its peak in March or April 1794."[364]
Meanwhile, the Revolution was devouring
its children with an ever-increasing frenzy. On October 31 the Girondists went
to the guillotine. By the Law of 14 Frumaire (4 December) extreme
centralisation – what Lenin later called “democratic centralism” – was decreed,
heralding the end of “the anarchic Terror”[365],
but accelerating the Terror within the central administration itself. In March
it was the turn of the Hébertists; in April – of the Dantonists. On
March 27 the Revolutionary Army was disbanded. By the end of April the commune
had been purged.
The most famous revolutionary of them all,
Robespierre, was still alive He was now preaching virtue and religion. Thus by
the Decree of 18 Floréal (7 May) it was declared that the French people
recognised a Supreme Being and the immorality of the soul, and that a cult
worthy of the Supreme Being was the fulfilment of a man’s civic duties. Thus
the emphasis was still on man’s civic duties: religion had no
independent function outside the State. This new religion required a new
morality. This was duly defined to include among the highest virtues “the
hatred of bad faith and tyranny, the punishment of tyrants and traitors, help
to the unhappy, respect for the weak, protection to the oppressed, to do all
the good possible to others and to be unjust to nobody.”[366]
And a religion has to have rites. So July 14, August 10, January 21 (the day of
the execution of Louis XVI) and May 31 (the day of the establishment of the
Jacobin tyranny) were duly commanded to be celebrated as feast-days.
On 20 Prairial (8 June), Robespierre moved
that “the nation should celebrate the Supreme Being. Thus every locality was
given a month to make its preparations. The fact that 8 June was also Whit
Sunday may or may not have been a coincidence; if not, it could have been
conceived either as a challenge or as an olive branch to Christianity. In the
event little direction was given to the localities on how to organize the
festival. Some adopted the props of all-too-recent festivals of reason, merely
painting out old slogans with new ones. Others used the opportunity to allow
mass to be said publicly for the first time in months. But in Paris the
organization of the occasion was entrusted to the experienced hands of the
painter David, himself a member of the Committee of General Security. He built
an artificial mountain in the Champ de Mars, surmounted by a tree of liberty,
and thither a mass procession made its way from the Tuileries. At its head
marched the members of the Convention, led by their president, who happened
that week to be Robespierre. He used the opportunity to deliver two more
eulogies of virtue and republican religion, pointedly ignoring, though not
failing to notice, the smirks of his fellow deputies at the posturings of this
pseudo-Pope. Others found it no laughing matter. ‘Look at the bugger,’ muttered
Thuriot, an old associate of Danton. ‘It’s not enough for him to be master, he
has to be God.’”[367]
Let us summarise the effects of the
revolution so far. “Where the Church was concerned,” writes Hampson, “the Civil
Constitution of 1790 had the social effect of a Reformation, in the sense that
it deprived a wealthy corporate institution of its autonomous position within
the state. Politically, this was the opposite of a Reformation, since it
destroyed the basis of the Gallican Church and made the French clergy dependent
upon Rome.”[368]
“Nobles were never proscribed as such and
their property was not confiscated unless they went into exile or were
condemned for political offences. Some noble families suffered very heavy
casualties during the Terror; others survived without much difficulty. The
‘anti-feudal’ legislation of the Constituent Assembly bore heavily on those who
income was derived mainly from manorial dues; those whose wealth came from
their extensive acres may have gained more from the abolition of tithes than
they lost from increased taxation. Some made profitable investments in church
land which were the ‘best buy’ of the revolution since massive inflation
reduced to a nominal figure the price paid by those who had opted to buy in
instalments…Over the country as a whole the proportion of land owned by the
nobility was somewhat reduced by the revolution but in most parts a substantial
proportion of the landowners still came from the nobility, and the land was the
most important source of wealth until well into the nineteenth century.”[369]
“The urban radicals whom the more radical
– but nevertheless gentlemanly – revolutionary leaders liked to eulogize as
sans-culottes, fared badly… As an observer reported in 1793, ‘That class has
suffered badly; it took the Bastille, was responsible for the tenth of August
and so on… Hébert and Marat, two of the most extreme of the radical
journalists, agreed that the sans-culottes were worse off than they had been in
1789. Soon, of course, all this was going to change… but it never did.”[370]
“The
revolution did not ‘give the land to the peasants’. They already possessed
about a quarter of it, although most of them did not own enough to be
self-sufficient. The Church lands were mostly snapped up by the wealthier
farmers or by outside speculators… The prevailing economic theories persuaded
the various assemblies to concentrate very heavily on direct taxation, most of
which fell on the land. Requisitioning of food, horses and carts was borne
exclusively by the peasants….
“Once again the revolution greatly
increased the impact of the state on the day-to-day life of the community. This
was especially obvious where religion was concerned.”[371]
As we have noted, one of the main effects
of the French revolution was the spread of nationalism throughout the world.
The foundation-stone of the nationalist faith was the third of the Rights of
Man declared by the French National Assembly on August 26, 1789: “The principle
of all sovereignty lies in the nation. No body of men, and no individual, can
exercise authority which does not emanate directly therefrom.” “And the nation,
as Abbé Siéyès put it, recognized no interest on earth
above its own, and accepted no law or authority other than its own – neither
that of humanity at large nor of other nations”[372]
– nor, it goes without saying, of God. The nation therefore stood in the place
of God; in the strict sense of the word, it was an idol. So Hobsbawm rightly
comments: “’The people’ identified with ‘the nation’ was a revolutionary
concept; more revolutionary than the bourgeois-liberal programme which
purported to express it.”[373]
But what precisely was the nation, and how
was it revealed? To this question the most revolutionary of the philosophes
and the prophet of nationalism, Rousseau, had provided the answer. The nation,
he said, is revealed in the general will, which was not to be identified with
the will of any individual, such as the king, or group, such as a parliamentary
majority, but only in some spontaneous, mystical upswelling of emotion that
carried all before it and was not to be questioned or criticised by any
rational considerations. It was a “holy madness”, to use Lafayette’s phrase.[374]
Like the Holy Spirit of God, it blew where it wished, overthrowing kings,
liberating subject peoples and making them into “real” nations.
Now this liberation of nations was
conceived as being a democratic, egalitarian process; it by no means implied
the superiority of any one nation over the others, which would simply be a
repetition, on the collective level, of the despotism that the revolution had
come to destroy. The religion of the French revolution was a universalist
religion based on equal rights for all men and all nations. It was believed
that once the kings had been removed, the general will of each nation would
reveal itself, spreading peace and harmony not only within, but also between,
nations.
Nothing could have been further from what
actually happened. The seemingly irrational and chaotic system of old Europe,
whereby kings could buy and sell territories to which they were quite unrelated
by birth or upbringing, turned out, in retrospect, to have kept the peace far
better than the system of more clearly defined, homogeneous nation-states that
emerged as a result of the Napoleonic wars. This is not to say, of course, that
there were no wars under the old system. But they tended to be short in
duration, with relatively few casualties, which were mainly confined to the
warrior class, and they were very quickly patched up by some redistribution of
territories among the monarchs. By contrast, the revolutionary wars that began
after 1792 were more like the religious wars of pre-1648 vintage: much bloodier
and crueller, involving far greater casualties among the civilian populations[375],
and never coming to a real end, since the losers felt bound to recover the
territories lost and avenge the wounds inflicted on their national or regional
pride. After all, if the people, and not the king, was now sovereign, victory
in war had to be won over the people as well as the king.
How did the internationalist dream turn
into a nationalist nightmare? The problem was partly a conceptual one: it
turned out to be notoriously difficult to define what “the nation” was, by what
criteria it should be defined (territory? religion? blood? language?).
Revolutionary definitions of who was a “patriot” – that is, the true member of
the nation - invariably meant defining large sections of the population who did
not accept this definition or did not come under it as being “traitors” or
“enemies of the people”.
But the problem went deeper: even when a
certain degree of unanimity had been achieved in the definition of the nation,
- as Napoleon achieved it for France, for example, in the period 1800-1813, -
there were now no accepted limits on the national will, no authority higher
than the nation itself. This inevitably resulted in nationalism in the evil
sense of the word that has become so tragically familiar to us in
twentieth-century fascism – not a natural pride in one’s own nation and its
achievements, but the exaltation of the nation to the level of divinity, and of
faith in the nation to the level of the true faith, the defence of which
justified any and every sacrifice of self and others. If in “Dark Age” (i.e.
Orthodox) and Medieval (i.e. Catholic) Europe, there had always been in the
Church a higher, supranational authority which arranged “Truces of God” and
served, at least in principle, as a higher court of appeal to which kings and
nations submitted, this was now finally swept away by article three of the
Rights of Man, which pitted the “general wills” of an ever-increasing number of
sovereign nations against each other in apparently endless and irreconcilable
hostility.
Inevitably it was revolutionary France
that began this process. Having replaced King and Church by the Nation as the
supreme authority, the French revolutionaries, puffed up by their achievements,
began to replace the Nation (i.e. any nation) by the Nation (one
particular nation) – which could only be France.
Of course, this nationalism was covered by
an ideological internationalism. Thus “sooner or later,” said Mirabeau to the
National Assembly, “the influence of a nation that… has reduced the art of
living to the simple notions of liberty and equality – notions endowed with
irresistible charm for the human heart, and propagated in all the countries of
the world – the influence of such a nation will undoubtedly conquer the whole
of Europe for Truth, Moderation and Justice, not immediately perhaps, not in a
single day…”[376]
But soon a more pagan note was creeping
in. “’You are, among the nations, what Hercules was amongst the heroes,’
Robespierre assured his countrymen. ‘Nature has made you sturdy and powerful;
your strength matches your virtue and your cause is that of the gods.’ France
was unique in her destiny, she was La Grande Nation, and all interests
were necessarily subordinate to hers. Her service was the highest calling,
since it naturally benefited mankind.”[377]
France then attempted to spread her
“virtue” throughout Europe in the wake of her conquering armies. Many welcomed
them, captivated by the liberal ideas they came to install. After all, had not
Napoleon himself said in 1802: “Never will the French Nation give chains to men
whom it has once recognized as free”[378]?
Thus as late as 1806 the German philosopher Hegel hoped that Napoleon would
defeat his opponents: “Everyone prays for the success of the French army”.
However, in the same year of 1802 Napoleon imposed slavery on liberated Haiti
and reintroduced the slave trade…[379]
And as captivation turned to captivity, enthusiasm turned to disillusion. Then,
when the French found that other nations would not be “forced to be free”,
their pious internationalism soon turned into violent xenophobia. Among the
nations of Europe, only Poland (conveniently protected by Germany from French
invasion, and needing French support against Russia) appeared to take the French
at their word.
Doyle writes: “An exuberant,
uncompromising nationalism lay behind France’s revolutionary expansion in the
1790s: but when the French found, after this first impact of a nation in arms
on its neighbours, was that the neighbours responded in kind. They found that
the doctrine of the sovereignty of the nation, proclaimed by them at the outset
of the Revolution in 1789, could be turned against them by other peoples
claiming their own national sovereignty. In states long united by custom and
language, such as the Dutch Republic, all the French example did was to
reinforce patriotic sentiments already strong. In areas never before united,
like Italy, it created a powerful national sentiment for the first time by
showing that archaic barriers and divisions could be swept away. The first
Italian nationalists placed their hopes in French power to secure their ends,
but from the start their attitude was double-edged. ‘Italy,’ declared the
winning entry for an essay competition on the best form of Italian government,
sponsored by the new French regime in Milan in 1796, ‘has almost always been
the patrimony of foreigners who, under the pretext of protecting us, have
consistently violated our rights, and, while giving us flags and fine-sounding
names, have made themselves masters of our estate. France, Germany and Spain
have held lordship over us in turn… it is therefore best to provide… the sort
of government capable of opposing the maximum of resistance to invasion.’ The
tragedy for nationalistic Italian Jacobins was that, when popular revulsion
against the French invaders swept the peninsula in 1798 and 1799, they found
themselves identified with the hated foreigners. Elsewhere, peoples and
intellectual nationalists found themselves more at one; and not the least of
the reasons why France’s most inveterate enemies were able to resist her
successfully was the strength of volunteering. An Austrian call for volunteers
against the French produced 150,000 men in 1809. Three years later the Russians
were able to supplement their normal armed forces with over 420,000 more or
less willing recruits to drive out the alien invader. Only nationalism could
successfully fight nationalism: and when it did, as Clausewitz… saw, it would
be a fight to the death.”[380]
Thus, as Hobsbawm notes, the
Anglo-French conflict had “a persistence and stubbornness unlike any other.
Neither side was really – a a rare thing in those days, though a common one
today – prepared to settle for less than total victory”.[381]
The main legacy of the revolution, therefore, was total war.
The
Jews and the Revolution
Of all these nationalisms, the most
important was that of the Jews, of whom there were 39,000 in France in 1789.
Nine-tenths of them Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim from Alsace.[382]
The principles of freedom, equality and the rights of man came up against a
formidable challenge in the form of the Jewish question. Were the Jews to be
accorded the same rights as the other members of the French Nation? Did they
belong to that Nation, or to some other?
The eighteenth century had already
witnessed some important changes in the relationship between the state and
Jewry. In England, the Jews had achieved emancipation de facto, if not de
jure. This was helped by the relatively small number of Jews in Britain,
and the non-ideological, non-interventionist, ad hoc approach of the
British government.
It was a different matter on the
continent, where a more ideological approach prevailed. In 1782 the Masonic
Austrian Emperor Joseph II published his Toleranzpatent, whose purpose
was that “all Our subjects without distinction of nationality and religion,
once they have been admitted and tolerated in our States, shall participate in
common in public welfare,… shall enjoy legal freedom, and encounter no
obstacles to any honest way of gaining their livelihood and of increasing
general industriousness… Existing laws pertaining to the Jewish nation… are not
always compatible with these Our most gracious intentions.” Most restrictions
on the Jews were removed, but these new freedoms applied only to the
“privileged Jew” – that is, the Jew whom the State found “useful” in some way –
and not to the “foreign Jew”. Moreover, even privileged Jews were not granted
the right of full citizenship and craft mastership.[383]
For Joseph wanted to grant tolerance to the Jews, but not full equality.
The French revolutionaries went further.
In their first debate on the subject, on September 28, 1789, made a further
important distinction between the nation and the individuals constituting the
nation. Thus Stanislas Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre argued that “they cannot be a
nation within a nation”, so “the Jews should be denied everything as a nation
but granted everything as individuals.”[384]
Later, in the debate on December 23, he went further in insisting that a
separate nation of the Jews within could not be allowed to exist within
France. For “virtually all – moderates no less than radicals, Dantonists no
less than Robespierrists, Christians as well as deists, pantheists, and
atheists – held that equality of status in the state they were in their various
ways intent on establishing was bound up of necessity with the elimination of
all groups, classes, or corporations intermediate (and therefore mediating)
between the state itself and the citizen.”[385]
Vital’s account of this debate is very
illuminating, so we shall quote it at length:- “The immediate issue before the
Assembly was the admission of certain semi-pariah classes – among them actors
and public executioners – to what came to be termed ‘active citizenship’. It
was soon apparent, however, that the issues presented by the Jews were very
different. It was apparent, too, that it would make no better sense to examine
the Jews’ case in tandem with that of the Protestants. The latter, like the
Jews, were non-Catholics, but their national identity was not in doubt,
nor, therefore, their right to the new liberties being decreed for all.
Whatever else they were, they were Frenchmen. No one in the National Assembly
thought otherwise. But were the Jews Frenchmen? If they were not, could they
become citizens? The contention of the lead speaker in the debate, Count
Stanislaw de Clermont-Tonnerre, was that the argument for granting them full
rights of citizenship needed to be founded on the most general principles.
Religion was a private affair. The law of the state need not and ought not to
impinge upon it. So long as religious obligations were compatible with the law
of the state and contravened it in no particular it was wrong to deprive a
person, whose conscience required him to assume such religious obligations, of
those rights which it was the duty of all citizens qua citizens to
assume. One either imposed a national religion by main force, so erasing the
relevant clause of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen to
which all now subscribed. Or else one allowed everyone the freedom to profess
the religious opinion of his choice. Mere tolerance was unacceptable.
‘The system of tolerance, coupled.. to degrading distinctions, is so vicious in
itself, that he who is compelled to tolerate remains as dissatisfied with the
law as is he whom it has granted no more than such a form of tolerance.’ There
was no middle way. The enemies of the Jews attacked them, and attacked him,
Clermont-Tonnerre, on the grounds that they were deficient morally. It was also
held of the Jews that they were unsociable, that their laws prescribed usury,
that they were forbidden to mix with the French by marriage or at table or join
them in defence of the country or in any other common enterprise. But these
reproaches were either unjust or specious. Usury was blameworthy beyond a
doubt, but it was the laws of France that had compelled the Jews to practise
it. And so with most of the other charges. Once the Jews had title to land and
a country of their own the practice of usury would cease. So would the
unsociability that was held against them. So would much of their religious
eccentricity [ces travers religieux]. As for the further argument, that
they had judges and laws of their own, why so they did, and on this matter he,
Clermont-Tonnerre, would say to his critics (coming to the passage in his
address to the Assembly that would be quoted over and over again in the course
of the two centuries that followed), that that indeed was impermissible.
“’As a nation the Jews must be denied
everything, as individuals they must be granted everything; their judges can no
longer be recognized; their recourse must be to our own exclusively; legal
protection for the doubtful laws by which Jewish corporate existence is
maintained must end; they cannot be allowed to create a political body or a
separate order within the state; it is necessary that they be citizens
individually.’
“There remained the question, what if, as
some argued, it was the case that the Jews themselves had no interest in
citizenship? Why in that case, he went on, ‘if they do not want it, let them
say so, in which case expel them [s’ils veulent ne l’être pas, qu’ils
le disent, et alors, qu’on les bannisse]’. The idea of a society of
non-citizens within the state and a nation within a nation was repugnant to
him. But in fact, the speaker concluded, that was not at all what the Jews
wanted. The evidence was to the contrary. They wished to be incorporated into
the nation of France.
“Clermont-Tonnerre was promptly
contradicted on this last, vital point by the abbé Maury. The term
‘Jew’, said the abbé did not denote a religious sect, but a nation, one
which had laws which it had always followed and by which it wished to continue
to abide. ‘To proclaim the Jews citizens would be as if to say that, without
letters of naturalization and without ceasing to be English or Danish,
Englishmen and Danes could become Frenchmen.’ But Maury’s chief argument was of
a moral and social order. The Jews were inherently undesirable, socially as
well as economically. They had been chased out of France, and then recalled, no
less than seven times – chased out by avarice, as Voltaire had rightly put it,
readmitted by avarice once more, but in foolishness as well.
“’The Jews have passed seventeen centuries
without mingling with the other nations. They have never engaged in anything
but trade in money; they have been the plague of the agricultural provinces;
not one of them has ever dignified [su ennoblir] his hands by driving a
plough. Their laws leave them no time for agriculture; the Sabbath apart, they
celebrate fifty-six more festivals than the Christians in each year. In Poland
they possess an entire province. Well, then! While the sweat of Christian
slaves waters the furrows in which the Jews’ opulence germinates they
themselves, as their fields are cultivated, engage in weighing their ducats and
calculating how much they can shave off the coinage without exposing themselves
to legal penalties.’
“They have
never been labourers, Maury continued, not even under David and Solomon. And
even then they were notorious for their laziness. Their sole concern was
commerce. Would you make soldiers of them, the abbé asked. If you did,
you would derive small benefit from them: they have a horror of celibacy and
they marry young. He knew of no general who would wish to command an army of
Jews either on the Sabbath – a day on which they never gave battle – or indeed
at any other time. Or did the Assembly imagine that they could make craftsmen
of them when their many festivals and sabbath days presented an insurmountable
obstacle to such an enterprise. The Jews held 12 million mortgages in Alsace
alone, he informed his colleagues. Within a month of their being granted
citizenship they would own half the province outright. In ten years’ time they
would have ‘conquered’ all of it, reducing it to nothing more than a Jewish
colony – upon which the hatred the people of Alsace already bore for the Jews
would explode.
“It was not that he, Maury, wished the
Jews to be persecuted. ‘They are men, they are our brothers; anathema on
whoever speaks of intolerance!’ Nor need their religious opinions disturb
anyone [!!!]. He joined all others in agreeing that they were to be protected.
But that did not mean that they could be citizens. It was as individuals that
they were entitled to protection, not as Frenchmen.
“Robespierre took the opposite line,
supporting Clermont-Tonnerre. All who fulfilled the generally applicable
conditions of eligibility to citizenship were entitled to the rights that
derived from it, he argued, including the right to hold public office. And so
far as the facts were concerned, much of what Maury had said about the Jews was
‘infinitely exaggerated’ and contrary to known history. Moreover, to charge the
Jews themselves with responsibility for their own persecution at the hands of
others, was absurd.
“’Vices are imputed to them… But to whom
should these vices be imputed if not to ourselves for our injustice?… Let us
restore them to happiness, to country [patrie], and to virtue by
restoring them to the dignity of men and citizens; let us reflect that it can
never be politic, whatever anyone might say, to condemn a multitude of men who
live among us to degradation and oppression.’”[386]
Thus spoke the man who was soon to lead
the most degrading and oppressive régime in European history. Indeed, it
is striking how those who spoke most fervently for the Jews – apart from
leaders of the Jewish community such as the banker Cerfbeer and Isaac Beer –
were radical Freemasons and/or Illuminati.
Thus in the two years before the crucial
debate on September 27, 1791, writes General Nechvolodov, “fourteen attempts
were made to give the Jews civic equality and thirty-five major speeches were
given by several orators, among them Mirabeau, Robespierre, Abbé
Grégoire, Abbé Sièyes, Camille, Desmoulins, Vernier,
Barnave, Lameth, Duport and others.
“’Now there is a singular comparison to be
made,’ says Abbé Lemann, ‘- all the names which we have just cited and
which figure in the Moniteur as having voted for the Jews are also found
on the list of Masons… Is this coincidence not proof of the order given, in the
lodges of Paris, to work in favour of Jewish emancipation?’
“And yet, in spite of the revolutionary
spirit, the National Assembly was very little inclined to give equality of
civil rights to the Jews. Against this reform there rose up all the deputies
from Alsace, since it was in Alsace that the majority of the French Jews of
that time lived….[387]
“But this opposition in the National
Assembly did not stop the Jews. To attain their end, they employed absolutely
every means.
“According to Abbé Lemann, these
means were the following:
“First means: entreaty. A charm exercised
over several presidents of the Assembly. Second: the influence of gold. Third
means: logic. After the National Assembly had declared the ‘rights of man’, the
Jews insisted that these rights should logically be applied to them, and they
set out their ideas on this subject with an ‘implacable arrogance’.
“Fourth means: recourse to the suburbs and
the Paris Commune, so as to force the National Assembly under ‘threat of
violence’ to give the Jews equality.
“’One of their most thorough historians
(Graetz),’ says Abbé Lemann, ‘did not feel that he had to hide this
manoeuvre. Exhausted, he says, by the thousand useless efforts they had made to
obtain civil rights, they thought up a last means. Seeing that it was
impossible to obtain by reason and common sense what they called their rights,
they resolved to force the National Assembly to approve of their emancipation.
“’To this end, naturally, were expended
vast sums, which served to establish the “Christian Front” which they wanted.
“’In the session of the National Assembly
of January 18, 1791, the Duke de Broglie expressed himself completely openly on
this subject: “Among them,” he said, “there is one in particular who has
acquired an immense fortune at the expense of the State, and who is spending in
the town of Paris considerable sums to win supporters of his cause,” He meant
Cerfbeer.’
“At the head of the Christian Front
created on this occasion were the lawyer Godard and three ecclesiastics: the
Abbés Mulot, Bertoliot and Fauchet.
“Abbé Fauchet was a well-known
‘illuminatus’, and Abbé Mulot – the president of the all-powerful Paris
Commune, with the help of which the Jacobins exerted, at the time desired, the
necessary pressure on the National and Legislative Assemblies, and later on the
Convention.
“What Gregory, curé of Embermeuil,
was for the Jews in the heart of the National Assembly, Abbé Mulot was
in the heart of the Commune.
“However, although they were fanatical
Jacobins, the members of the Commune were far from agreeing to the propositions
of their president that they act in defence of Jewish rights in the National
Assembly. It was necessary to return constantly to the attack, naturally with
the powerful help of Cerfbeer’s gold and that of the Abbés Fauchet and
Bertoliot. This latter declared during a session of the Commune on this
question: ‘It was necessary that such a happy and unexpected event as the revolution
should come and rejuvenate France… Let us hasten to consign to oblivion the
crimes of our fathers.’
“Then, during another session, the lawyer
Godard bust into the chamber with fifty armed ‘patriots’ dressed in costumes of
the national guard with three-coloured cockades. They were fifty Jews who,
naturally provided with money, had made the rounds of the sections of the Paris
Commune and of the wards of the town of Paris, talking about recruiting
partisans of equality for the Jews. This had its effect. Out of the sixty
sections of Paris fifty-nine declared themselves for equality (only the
quartier des Halles abstained). Then the Commune addressed the National
Assembly with an appeal signed by the Abbés Mulot, Bertoliot, Fauchet
and other members, demanding that equality be immediately given to the Jews.
“However, even after that, the National
Assembly hesitated in declaring itself in the manner provided. Then, on
September 27, the day of the penultimate session of the Assembly before its dissolution,
the Jacobin deputy Adrien Duport posed the question of equality for the Jews in
a categorical fashion. The Assembly knew Adrien Duport’s personality perfectly.
It knew that in a secret meeting of the chiefs of Freemasonry which preceded
the revolution, he had insisted on the necessity of resort to a system of
terror. The Assembly yielded. There followed a decree signed by Louis XVI
granting French Jews full and complete equality of rights…”[388]
But this was not the end of the matter. In
the late 1790s a new wave of Ashkenazis entered France from Germany, attracted
by the superior status their French brothers now enjoyed.[389]
This was to lead to further disturbances in Alsace, which it was left to
Napoleon to deal with…
“Nevertheless,” as Paul Johnson writes,
“the deed was done. French Jews were now free and the clock could never be
turned back. Moreover, emancipation in some form took place wherever the French
were able to carry the revolutionary spirit with their arms. The ghettos and
Jewish closed quarters were broken into in papal Avignon (1791), Nice (1792)
and the Rhineland (1792-3). The spread of the revolution to the Netherlands,
and the founding of the Batavian republic, led to Jews being granted full and
formal rights by law there (1796). In 1796-8 Napoleon Bonaparte liberated many
of the Italian ghettos, French troops, young Jews and local enthusiasts tearing
down the crumbling old walls.
“For the first time a new archetype, who
had always existed in embryonic form, began to emerge from the shadows: the
revolutionary Jew. Clericalists in Italy swore enmity to ‘Gauls, Jacobins and
Jews’. In 1793-4 Jewish Jacobins set up a revolutionary regime in Saint Esprit,
the Jewish suburb of Bayonne. Once again, as during the Reformation, traditionalists
saw a sinister link between the Torah and subversion.”[390]
However, the above picture of the Jewish
struggle for emancipation in Paris and, later, Bayonne should not obscure the
fact that there was still very strong opposition to the idea of emancipation
from within Jewry itself. This opposition was led especially by the rabbinic
leaders of Ashkenazi Jewry, whose greatest concentration was in Poland.
Thus Zalkind Hourwitz, a Polish Jew who
won a prize for an essay advocating Jewish emancipation from the Royal Society
for Arts and Sciences at Metz in 1787, nevertheless, as Vital writes, “made no
bones about his view of the internal constraints to which Jews in all parts
were subject through the workings of the rabbinical-Talmudic system: of the
limits it set upon their worldly freedom, of the manner in which it effectively
barred their entry into society on a basis of equality. The social liberation
of the Jews was conditional, he believed, on the power that the rabbis and the parnassim
[chief synagogue officials] jointly exercised over ordinary people in their
daily lives being terminated – in great matters as in small. ‘Their rabbis and
syndics [i.e. parnassim] must be strictly forbidden to assume the least
authority over their fellows outside the synagogue, or refuse honours to those
who have shaved off their beards, or curled their hair, or who dress like
Christians, go to the theatre, or observe other customs that bear no actual
relation to their religion, but derive from superstition alone as a means of
distinguishing them from other peoples.’”[391]
In France, it had been the less typical,
socially marginalized Jews who had pressed for emancipation. Even the more
acculturated Sephardic Jews of Bourdeaux and Bayonne had been slow to ask for
emancipation, first, because they feared that they might have to pay for
liberties which they already enjoyed de facto, and secondly, because
they wanted to be clearly delineated from the Ashkenazi Jews of Alsace.
The latter, continues Vital, “had been
slower still to ask for liberation. There is no evidence of their authorized
representatives pressing for anything remotely of the kind before the
Revolution; and when they made their own first approach to the new National
Assembly it was to ask for no more than an end to the special taxes laid upon
them and the abolition of the residential, and travel restrictions to which
they were subject. The greatest anxiety of the Alsatians was to retain their
own internal communal autonomy – to which end, with only rare exceptions, they
(at all events, their authorized representatives) were prepared to forgo
emancipation altogether. Only when they learned that other branches of French
Jewry, the small community in Paris among them, were prepared to yield to the
demand that they give up their ancient corporate status did the Alsatians and
Lorrainers fall, reluctantly, into line.”[392]
The question: to emancipate or not to
emancipate? was to cause bitter divisions in Jewry that have continued to the
present day. It brought into sharp focus another question: was it possible
for the Jews, while remain Jewish, ever to become an integral part of
non-Jewish society? The extreme revolutionary zeal of many of the champions of
emancipation, on the one hand, and the equally extreme bigotry and
ghetto-creating mentality of the opponents of emancipation, on the other,
suggested that there was no easy solution to this problem, even with the best
intentions of the Gentile rulers…
Napoleon
Bonaparte
Robespierre, the god of the revolution,
did not survive its terror. By a Law of 22 Prairial (10 June, 1794), witnesses
and defending counsels were decreed to be no longer necessary in trials – so no
one was safe. Robespierre’s enemies struck first, and on 9 Thermidor (27 June)
he fell from power, and was executed the next day.
While the fall of Robespierre marked the
end of the most fanatical phase in the revolution, normal life was not restored
quickly. “On 18 September 1794, the Convention had carried the drift of the
Revolution since 1790 to a logical conclusion when it finally renounced the
constitutional Church. The Republic, it decreed, would no longer pay the costs
or wages of any cult – not that it had been paying them in practice for a
considerable time already. It meant the end of state recognition for the
Supreme Being, a cult too closely identified with Robespierre. But above all it
marked the abandonment of the Revolution’s own creation, the constitutional
Church. For the first time ever in France, Church and State were now formally
separated. To some this decree looked like a return to dechristianization, and
here and there in the provinces there were renewed bursts of persecution
against refractories. But most read it, correctly, as an attempt to deflect the
hostility of those still faithful to the Church from the Republic. The natural
corollary came with the decree of 21 February 1795 which proclaimed the freedom
of all cults to worship as they liked. The tone of the law was grudging, and it
was introduced with much gratuitous denigration of priestcraft and
superstition. Religion was defined as a private affair, and local authorities
were forbidden to lend it any recognition or support. All outward signs of
religious affiliation in the form of priestly dress, ceremonies, or church
bells remained strictly forbidden. The faithful would have to buy or rent their
own places of worship and pay their own priests or ministers…”[393]
In 1795 a committee of five, the
Directory, was established. Fearing coups from the royalist right as well as
the Jacobin left, it continued the slow torture of the Dauphin (Louis XVII),
who died in prison on June 10. Meanwhile, hunger, inflation, high taxation and
unemployment stalked the land.
The most significant attempt to overthrow
the government from the left was that of the Illuminatus “Gracchus” Babeuf, who
“had come to the conclusion that there would be no true equality among men
until property itself was abolished. Common ownership and equal distribution of
goods should be the proper aim of the State, which it should pursue if
necessary by terroristic methods far more fierce than any seen in France so
far.”[394] Babeuf
was a true precursor of Lenin…
Eventually the revolution’s most
successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte, overthrew the Directory, and on 19
Brumaire (November 10), 1799, frightened the two elective assemblies into
submission – but only after having to defend himself, unconvincingly, against
the charge of being a Caesar or a Cromwell. On December 13 a new constitution
was proclaimed with Napoleon as the first of three Consuls with full executive
powers.
Napoleon was as sincerely faithful to the
spirit of the revolution as Cromwell had been; but, like Cromwell, he found
that in order to save the revolution he had to take control of it and rule like
a king. Indeed, his rule was more complete and despotic than that of any king
of the ancien régime. Moreover, while Cromwell had at any rate
eschewed the trappings and ceremonial of monarchy, Napoleon embraced them with
avidity.
The trend towards monarchy and hierarchy
was already evident elsewhere; and “earlier than is generally thought,” writes
Philip Mansel, “the First Consul Bonaparte aligned himself with this
monarchical trend, acquiring in succession a guard (1799), a palace (1800),
court receptions and costumes (1800-02), a household (1802-04), a dynasty
(1804), finally a nobility (1808)… The proclamation of the empire in May 1804,
the establishment of the households of the Emperor, the Empress and the
Imperial Family in July, the coronation by the pope in December of that year,
were confirmations of an existing monarchical reality.”[395]
On hearing that Napoleon had declared
himself Emperor, Beethoven scratched out the dedication he had made to him at
the head of the “Eroica” symphony – the champion of freedom had become the
restorer of tyranny!
Moreover, Napoleon spread monarchy
throughout Europe. In the wake of his conquests, and excluding the direct
annexations to the French Empire, the kingdoms and Grand Duchies of Italy,
Venice, Rome, Naples, Lucca, Dubrovnik, Holland, Mainz, Bavaria,
Württemburg, Saxony, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Westphalia and Spain were all
established or re-established with still greater monarchical power - and with
all ruled by Napoleon’s relations by blood or marriage. As Stendhal said in
1818, Napoleon’s court “totally corrupted” him “and exalted his amour propre
to the state of a disease… He was on the point of making Europe one vast
monarchy.”[396]
“As one of his secretaries Baron Meneval
wrote, he saw himself as ‘the pillar of royalty in Europe’. On January 18th,
1813, he wrote to his brother Jerome that his enemies, by appealing to popular
feeling, represented ‘upheavals and revolutions… pernicious doctrines.’ In
Napoleon’s opinion his fellow monarchs were traitors to ‘their own cause’ when
in 1813 they began to desert the French Empire, or in 1814 refused to accept
his territorial terms for peace…”[397]
Jocelyn Hunt writes: “Kings before 1791
were said to be absolute but were limited by all kinds of constraints and
controls. The Church had an almost autonomous status. Bonaparte ensured that
the Church was merely a branch of the civil service. Kings were anointed by the
Church, and thus owed their authority to God: Bonaparte took power through his
own strength, camouflaged as ‘the General Will’ which, as Correlli Barnett
acidly remarks, ‘became synonymous with General Bonaparte’. Indeed, when he
became emperor in 1804, he crowned himself, albeit in the presence of the Pope.
“The First Consul’s choice of ministers
was a far more personal one than had been possible for the kings of France.
Bonaparte established a system of meeting his ministers individually, in order
to give his instructions. In the same way, Bonaparte chose which ‘ordinary’
citizens he would consult; kings of France had mechanisms for consulting ‘the
people’ but these had fallen into disuse and thus, when the Estates General met
in 1789, the effect was revolutionary. Bonaparte’s legislative body was, until
1814, submissive and compliant.
“Kings of France had controlled local
government, with the intendants replacing the traditional power of the
provincial nobles. Bonaparte may be said to have restored the system of
intendants, but his prefects were far more his own creatures: the Minister of
the Interior, Lucien Bonaparte, discussed each appointment with him and again,
Bonaparte was not limited to a particular class, but could choose any citizen
he wanted. Once the prefects were in place, their links with Paris were close
and the rules governing their conduct specific…
“Police control and limitations on
personal freedom had been a focus of condemnation by the Philosophes before the
Revolution, but had not been entirely efficient: a whole industry of importing
and distributing banned texts had flourished in the 1770s and 1780s.
Bonaparte’s police were more thorough, and so swingeing were the penalties that
self-censorship rapidly became the safest path for a newspaper to take. Bonaparte
closed down sixty of the seventy-three newspapers in Paris in January, 1800,
and had a weekly summary prepared of all printed material, but he was soon able
to tell his Chief of Police, Fouché, ‘They only print what I want them
to.’ In the same way, the hated lettres de cachet appear limited and
inefficient when compared to Bonaparte’s and Fouché’s record of police
spies, trials without jury and imprisonment without trial. Bonaparte’s brief
experience as a Jacobin leader in Ajaccio had taught him how to recognise, and
deal with, potential opponents.
“The judiciary had stood apart from the
kings of the ancien régime: while the King was nominally the
supreme Judge, the training of lawyers and judges had been a matter for the
Parlements, with their inherent privileges and mechanisms. The Parlements
decided whether the King’s laws were acceptable within the fundamental laws of
France. Under the Consulate, there were no such constraints on the legislator.
The judges were his appointees, and held office entirely at his pleasure; the
courts disposed of those who opposed or questioned the government, far more
rapidly that had been possible in the reign of Louis XVI. Imprisonment and
deportation became regularly used instruments of control under Bonaparte.
“Kings of France were fathers to their
people and had a sense of duty and service. Bonaparte, too, believed that he
was essential to the good and glory of France, but was able to make his own
decisions about what constituted the good of France in a way which was not open
to the king. Finally, while the monarchy of France was hereditary and
permanent, and the position of First Consul was supposed to be held for ten
years, Bonaparte’s strength was demonstrated when he changed his own
constitution, first to give him the role for life and then to become a
hereditary monarch. All in all, no monarch of the ancien régime
had anything approaching the power which Bonaparte had been permitted to take
for himself…
“When a Royalist bomb plot was uncovered
in December, 1800, Bonaparte seized the opportunity to blame it on the
Jacobins, and many were guillotined, with over a hundred more being exiled or
imprisoned. The regime of the Terror had operated in similar ways to remove
large numbers of potential or actual opponents. Press censorship and the use of
police spies ensured that anti-government opinions were not publicly aired. The
Declaration of the Rights of Man had guaranteed freedom of expression; but this
freedom had already been eroded before Bonaparte’s coup. The Terror had seen
both moral and political censorship, and the Directory had on several occasions
exercised its constitutional right to censor the press. Bonaparte appears
merely to have been more efficient…
“Bonaparte certainly held power without
consulting the French people; he took away many of the freedoms they had been
guaranteed in 1789; he taxed them more heavily than they had been taxed before.
[In 1803 he wrote:] “I haven’t been able to understand yet what good there is
in an opposition. Whatever it may say, its only result is to diminish the
prestige of authority in the eyes of the people.”[398]
So Napoleon was undoubtedly a despot, but
a despot who could claim many precedents for his despotism in the behaviour of
the Jacobins and Directory. And if he was not faithful to the forms of the
revolution in its early phase, replacing democracy (of a kind) with monarchy
(of an absolutist kind), he nevertheless remained faithful to its spirit. And
what was that spirit? On the one hand, the principle that nobody and nothing
should be independent of the secular state – in other words, the principle of
totalitarianism. And on the other, the principle that the Nation was the
supreme value, and serving and dying for the Nation the supreme glory. With regard to totalitarianism, the
revolution had already, of course, done much, sweeping away all the complex
structures of feudalism. But Napoleon went further. Thus in addition to the
measures discussed above, he abolished trade unions, introduced a standardised
system of weights and measures, and a standardised system of education and
legislation, the famous Code Napoleon. Everything, from religion to economics
to the government of friendly sister-republics, such as Holland, had to be
controlled from the centre. And the centre was Napoleon.
The revolution had regularised several
tendencies that were to become standard characteristics of all major modern
states: state control of religion, emancipation of the Jews, far greater and
more centralised taxation; assumption by the state of responsibility for all
social security (charity was banned) and most education, mass conscription and
standing armies; and the use of paper money. Napoleon reinforced all these
tendencies (although he did reintroduce gold into the Treasury and balanced the
budget). To that extent he was the true successor of the revolution.
Moreover, he tried to export the ideals of
Freedom, Equality and Fraternity into the countries he conquered – while
reducing these countries to his personal rule. For “abroad, liberty simply
meant French rule.”[399]
This latter contradiction was especially glaring in the former French colony of
Haiti, the first country to declare its freedom in the wake of the revolution:
in 1802 Napoleon tried to reintroduce slavery there, and his troops were
defeated by black soldiers singing the Marseillaise.
At the same time Napoleon managed to
persuade his fellow-countrymen that everything he did was for the glory and
honour of France. And so while his despotism angered some Frenchmen, the
tickling of their pride was ample compensation, and enabled them reconcile
themselves with the loss of their freedom. “As Frenchmen accorded more and more
weight to Napoleon’s wishes, so the notion of honour came to the fore in the
French Republic: honour and its sister concept, glory, patriotism à
outrance and the chivalry that had made Napoleon crown Josephine…”[400]
Napoleon
and Catholicism
Napoleon’s attitude towards religion was
on the one hand respectful and on the other hand manipulative and utilitarian.
His respectfulness is revealed in the following remark: “There are only two
forces in the world: the sword and the spirit; by spirit I mean the civil and
religious institutions; in the long run the sword is always defeated by the
spirit.”[401] On the
other hand, his essentially unbelieving, utilitarian attitude is revealed in
the following: “I see in religion not the mystery of the Incarnation but the
mystery of order in society”.[402]
In other words, religion was powerful, and
as such had to be respected. But it was powerful not because it was true, but
because it was a – perhaps the – major means of establishing order in
society.
Napoleon, writes Doyle, “never made the
mistake of underestimating either the power of religion or the resilience of
the Church. Under orders in the spring of 1796 to march on Rome to avenge the
murder by a Roman mob of a French envoy, he was confronted by a Spanish
emissary from the pontiff. ’I told him [the Spaniard reported], if you people
take it into your heads to make the pope say the slightest thing against dogma
or anything touching on it, you are deceiving yourselves, for he will never do
it. You might, in revenge, sack, burn and destroy Rome, St. Peter’s etc. but
religion will remain standing in spite of your attacks. If all you wish is that
the pope urge peace in general, and obedience to legitimate power, he will
willingly do it. He appeared to me captivated by this reasoning…’ Certainly he
continued while in Italy to treat the Pope with more restraint than the
Directory had ordered: and when, early the next year, the Cispadane Republic
was established in territories largely taken from the Holy See, he advised its
founders that: ‘Everything is to be done by degrees and with gentleness.
Religion is to be treated like property.’ Devoid of any personal faith, in
Egypt he even made parade of following Islam in the conviction that it would
strengthen French rule. By the time he returned to Europe, it was clear that
Pope Pius VI would not after all be the last…
“This approach bore one important fruit:
in his Christmas sermon for 1797 the new Pope, Pius VII, declared that
Christianity was not incompatible with democracy – a very major concession to
the revolution that later Popes would take back.
“On his second entry into Milan, in June
1800, he convoked the city’s clergy to the great cathedral, and declared, even
before Marengo was fought: ‘It is my firm intention that the Christian,
Catholic and Roman religion shall be preserved in its entirety, that it shall
be publicly performed… No society can exist without morality; there is no good
morality without religion. It is religion alone, therefore, that gives to the
State a firm and durable support…’”[403]
Religious toleration was both in
accordance with the ideals of democracy and politically expedient. Thus to the
same clergy convocation he said: “The people is sovereign; if it wants
religion, respect its will.” And to his own Council of State he said: “My
policy is to govern men as the majority wish. That, I believe, is the way to
recognize the sovereignty of the people. It was… by turning Muslim that I
gained a hold in Egypt, by turning ultramontane that I won over people in
Italy. If I were governing Jews, I should rebuild Solomon’s temple.”[404].
It is in this astonishingly cynical
attitude to religion that Napoleon reveals his modernity. It is what made him
perhaps the closest forerunner to the Antichrist that had yet appeared on the
stage of world history, and closer even, in some ways, than Lenin or Stalin.
For the Antichrist will not – at first – persecute religion; he will rather try
to be the champion of all religions – in order to subdue them all
to his will. He will very likely be an ecumenist as Napoleon was. And he will
rebuild Solomon’s temple…
Napoleon’s first task in the religious
sphere was to heal the breach between the Constitutional Church, which had
accepted the revolution, and the non-jurors, who had rejected it. Only the
non-jurors were recognised by the Pope, so an agreement had to be reached with
Rome. This proved to be difficult, but finally, on July 15, 1801, a Concordat
was signed in the Tuileries.
“This document,” writes Cronin, “opens
with a preamble describing Roman Catholicism as ‘the religion of the great
majority of the French people’ and the religion professed by the consuls.
Worship was to be free and public. The Pope, in agreement with the Government,
was to re-map dioceses in such a way as to reduce their number by more than
half to sixty. The holders of bishoprics were to resign and if they declined to
do so, were to be replaced by the Pope. The First Consul was to appoint new
bishops; the Pope was to invest them. The Government was to place at the
disposal of bishops all the un-nationalized churches necessary for worship, and
to pay bishops and curés a suitable salary.
“The Concordat was an up-to-date version
of the old Concordat, which had regulated the Church in France for almost 300
years. But it was less Gallican, that is, it gave the French hierarchy less
autonomy. Napoleon conceded to the Pope not only the power of investing
bishops, which he had always enjoyed, but the right, in certain circumstances,
to depose them, which was something new. Napoleon did this in order to be able
to effect a clean sweep of bishops.
“Napoleon did not discuss the Concordat
beforehand with his Council of State. When he did show it to them they
criticized it as insufficiently Gallican. The assemblies, they predicted, would
never make it law unless certain riders were added. Finally seventy ‘organic
articles’ were drawn up and added to the Concordat. For example, all bulls from
Rome were to be subject to the Government’s placet, one of which
asserted that the Pope must abide by the decisions of an ecumenical council…
“In April 1802 Napoleon re-opened the churches of France.”[405]
This was one of his most popular measures,
and it enabled him to enlist the Church in support of his government – as did,
of course, his coronation by the Pope.
“But even while seeking the Church’s
support, Napoleon kept firmly to the principle that the temporal and spiritual
are two separate realms, and had to be kept separate in France. He might easily
have used his growing authority to subordinate the Church to the State, but
although he was occasionally tempted to do so, he quickly drew back… Equally,
Napoleon refrained from subordinating the State to the Church. When bishops
urged him to shut all shops and cabarets on Sundays so that the faithful should
not be enticed from Mass, Napoleon replied: ‘The curé’s power resides in
exhortations from the pulpit and in the confessional; police spies and prisons
are bad ways of trying to restore religious practices.’”[406]
However, while Napoleon wanted the Church
to flourish, he was too fundamentally irreligious to allow it to escape the
general control of the State. Thus he appointed a Minister of Religions to
solve the day-to-day problems of the Church, and fixed the salary of
curés at 500 francs. Moreover, in 1809, he occupied Rome and the Papal
States and removed Pius from his position as ruler in exchange for a handsome
salary. “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “although a descendant of David, did
not want an earthly kingdom…” Pius then excommunicated Napoleon for his
“blasphemy” and refused to invest his nominees to vacant bishoprics. Napoleon
had still not tamed the rebellious priest by the time of his downfall…[407]
Monsieur Emery, the director of
Saint-Sulpice, defended the Pope, reminding Napoleon “that God had given the
Pope spiritual power over all Christians. ‘But not temporal power,’ objected
Napoleon. ‘Charlemagne gave him that, and I, as Charlemagne’s successor,
intended to relieve him of it. What do you think of that, Monsieur Emery?’
‘Sire, exactly what Bossuet thought. In his Declaration du clergé de
France he says that he congratulates not only the Roman Church but the
Universal Church on the Pope’s temporal sovereignty because, being independent,
he can more easily exercise his functions as father of all the faithful.’
Napoleon replied that what was true for Bossuet’s day did not apply in 1811,
when western Europe was ruled by one man, not disputed by several”.[408]
Thus in France, as in England, the
established Church survived the revolution. The restoration of the monarchy
(for that is what Napoleon’s reign constituted) went hand-in-hand with the
restoration of the Church, if not to a position of independence, still less
“symphony” with the State, at any rate of greater influence. And yet as the
ideas of the revolution continued to spread and take hold, the Catholic
Church’s authority and influence continued to decline…
Napoleon
and Jewry
If the French revolution gave the Jews
their first great political victory, Napoleon gave them their second. On May
22, 1799, Napoleon’s Paris Moniteur published the following report,
penned from Constantinople on April 17: “Buonaparte has published a
proclamation in which he invites all the Jews of Asia and Africa to come and
place themselves under his flag in order to re-establish ancient Jerusalem.
He has already armed a great number and their battalions are threatening
Aleppo.”
This was not the first time that the Jews
had persuaded a Gentile ruler to restore them to Jerusalem. In the fourth
century the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate allowed the Jews to return to
Jerusalem and start rebuilding the Temple. However, fire came out from the
foundations and black crosses appeared on the workers’ garments, forcing them
to abandon the enterprise.[409]
And the Jews were to be thwarted again.
For British sea-power prevented Napoleon from reaching Jerusalem and making
himself, as was reported to be his intention, king of the Jews. The Jews would
have to wait over a century before another Gentile power – this time, the
British – again offered them a return to Zion.
Napoleon now learned what many rulers
before and after had learned: that kindness towards the Jews does not make them
more tractable. Nechvolodov writes: “Since the first years of the Empire,
Napoleon I had become very worried about the Jewish monopoly in France and the
isolation in which they lived in the midst of the other citizens, although they
had received citizenship. The reports of the departments showed the activity of
the Jews in a very bad light: ‘Everywhere there are false declarations to the
civil authorities; fathers declare the sons who are born to them to be
daughters… Again, there are Jews who have given an example of disobedience to
the laws of conscription; out of sixty-nine Jews who, in the course of six
years, should have formed part of the Moselle contingent, none has entered the
army.’
“By contrast, behind the army, they give
themselves up to frenzied speculation.
“’Unfortunately,’ says Thiers in his History
of the Revolution while describing the entry of the French into Rome, ‘the
excesses, not against persons but against property, marred the entry of the
French into the ancient capital of the world… Berthier had just left for Paris,
Massena had just succeeded him. This hero [a Jew] was accused of having given
the first example. He was soon imitated. They began to pillage the palaces, the
convents, the rich collections. Some Jews in the rear of the army bought for a
paltry price the magnificent objects which the looters were offering them.’
“It was in 1805, during Napoleon’s passage
through Strasbourg, after the victory of Austerlitz, that the complaints
against the Jews acquired great proportions. The principal accusations which were
brought against them concerned the terrible use they made of usury. As soon as
he returned to Paris, Napoleon judged it necessary to concentrate all his
attention on the Jews. In the State Council, during its session of April 30, he
said, among other things, the following on this subject:
“’The French government cannot look on
with indifference as a vile, degraded nation capable of every iniquity takes
exclusive possession of two beautiful departments of Alsace; one must consider
the Jews as a nation and not as a sect. It is a nation within a nation; I would
deprive them, at least for a certain time, of the right to take out mortgages,
for it is too humiliating for the French nation to find itself at the mercy of
the vilest nation. Some entire villages have been expropriated by the Jews;
they have replaced feudalism… It would be dangerous to let the keys of France,
Strasbourg and Alsace, fall into the hands of a population of spies who are not
at all attached to the country.’”[410]
Napoleon eventually decided on an
extraordinary measure: to convene a 111-strong Assembly of Jewish Notables in
order to receive clear and unambiguous answers to the following questions: did
the Jewish law permit mixed marriages; did the Jews regard Frenchmen as foreigners
or as brothers; did they regard France as their native country, the laws of
which they were bound to obey; did the Judaic law draw any distinction between
Jewish and Christian debtors?
At the same time, writes Johnson, Napoleon
“supplemented this secular body by convening a parallel meeting of rabbis and
learned laymen, to advise the Assembly on technical points of Torah and
halakhah. The response of the more traditional elements of Judaism was poor.
They did not recognize Napoleon’s right to invent such a tribunal, let alone
summon it…. The body was dubbed the Sanhedrin…”[411]
However, if some traditionalists did not
welcome it, other Jews received the news with unbounded joy. “According to
Abbé Lemann,” writes Nechvolodov, “they grovelled in front of him and
were ready to recognize him as the Messiah. The sessions of the Sanhedrin
[composed of 46 rabbis and 25 laymen from all parts of Western Europe] took
place in February and March, 1807, and the Decision of the Great Sanhedrin
began with the words:
“’Blessed forever is the Lord, the God of
Israel, Who has placed on the throne of France and of the kingdom of Italy a
prince according to His heart. God has seen the humiliation of the descendants
of ancient Jacob, and He has chosen Napoleon the Great to be the instrument of
His mercy… Reunited today under his powerful protection in the good town of
Paris, to the number of seventy-one doctors of the law and notables of Israel,
we constitute a Great Sanhedrin, so as to find in us a means and power to
create religious ordinances in conformity with the principles of our holy laws,
and which may serve as a rule and example to all Israelites. These ordinances
will teach the nations that our dogmas are consistent with the civil laws under
which we live, an do not separate us at all from the society of men…’”[412]
“Love of country is in the heart of Jews a
sentiment so natural, so powerful, and so consonant with their religious
opinions, that a French Jew considers himself in England, as among strangers,
although he may be among Jews; and the case is the same with English Jews in
France. To such a pitch is this sentiment carried among them, that during the
last war, French Jews were fighting desperately against other Jews, the subject
of countries then at war with France.”[413]
“The Jewish delegates,” writes Platonov,
“declared that state laws had the same obligatory force for Jews, that every
honourable study of Jewish teaching was allowed, but usury was forbidden, etc.
[However,] to the question concerning mixed marriages of Jews and Christians
they gave an evasive, if not negative reply. ‘Although mixed marriages between
Jews and Christians cannot be clothed in a religious form, they nevertheless do
not draw upon them any anathema.”[414]
On the face of it, the Decision of the
Sanhedrin was a great triumph for Napoleon, who could now treat Jewry as just
another religious denomination, and not a separate nation.[415]
And indeed, as Douglas Reed says, “Orthodox Judaism, with the face of it turned
towards the West, denied any suggestion that the Jews would form a nation
within nations. Reform Judaism in time ‘eliminated every prayer expressing so
much as even the suspicion of a hope or desire for any form of Jewish national
resurrection’ (Rabbi Moses P. Jacobson).”[416]
However, the Jews did not restrain their
money-lending and speculative activities, as Napoleon had pleaded with them. On
the contrary, only one year after the convening of the Great Sanhedrin,
Napoleon was forced to adopt repressive measures against their financial
excesses. Moreover, Napoleon created rabbinic consistories in France having
disciplinary powers over Jews and granted rabbis the status of state officials
– a measure that was strengthen the powers of the rabbis over their people. In
time Jewish consistories were created all over Europe. They “began the stormy
propaganda of Judaism amidst Jews who had partially fallen away from the
religion of their ancestors, organised rabbinic schools and spiritual
seminaries for the education of youth in the spirit of Talmudic Judaism.”[417]
Indeed, the main result of the Great
Sanhedrin, writes Nechvolodov, “was to unite Judaism still more.
“’Let us not forget from where we draw our
origin,’ said Rabbi Salomon Lippmann Cerfbeer on July 26, 1808, in his speech
for the opening of the preparatory assembly of the Sanhedrin:- ‘Let it no
longer be a question of “German” or “Portuguese” Jews; although disseminated
over the surface of the globe, we everywhere form only one unique people.’”[418]
The emancipation of the Jews in France led
to their emancipation in other countries under French influence, as we have
seen. Even after the fall of Napoleon, on June 8, 1815, the Congress of Vienna
decreed that “it was incumbent on the members of the German Confederation to
consider an ‘amelioration’ of the civil status of all those who ‘confessed the
Jewish faith in Germany.’”[419]
Gradually, though not without opposition, Jewish emancipation spread through
Europe…
Napoleon
and the Latin American Revolutions
Another kind of nationalism owed its
origins to the impact of Napoleon, not on whole societies, but directly on
certain individuals, who then tried to imitate Napoleon’s impact on society as
a whole. Such individuals were generally ambitious adventurers who managed by
hook or by crook to impose themselves on weakened government structures and
then claim for themselves the mandate of the people, as if their individual
will represented the “general will” of the people. Simple despotism, in other
words, disguised as liberation from despotism. Very often these “liberated”
peoples had no idea that they had been a distinct nation before, and would have
been much happier without any “liberator”. They were indeed “forced to be
free”, in Rousseau’s phrase.
The
most famous of the “liberators” was Simon Jose Antonio de la Santissima
Trinidad de Bolivar. Bolivar is a good example of the terrible spiritual damage
done to a whole generation of young men by the heroic image of Napoleon. Just
as Napoleon himself stood between the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the
passion of the Romantic age, uniting them in the image of himself fighting for
both the ideals of the Enlightenment and the death-defying glory of the
romantic hero, so did Bolivar and a host of similar adventurers in Central and
South America aspire to unite national “liberation” with personal glory.
“Bolivar arrived in the French capital
just in time for Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of the French, an event he
watched with fascination. In March 1805 ... he saw Napoleon crown himself king
of Italy. ‘I centred my attention on Napoleon and saw nothing but him out of
that crowd of men,’ he wrote. He travelled on to Rome under the spell of this
vision and there, after considering what he had seen, he ascended the Monte
Sacro, where he fell on his knees and swore an oath before Rodriguez to
liberate South America.”[420]
Bolivar seized his chance after Napoleon
deposed King Ferdinand VII of Spain, which eventually unleashed a strong
nationalist backlash in Spain – but not before breaking the legal links between
Spain and its colonies in the Americas. Returning to Venezuela, Boliva
proceeded to win, lose and finally reconquer Caracas from the Spaniards in a
series of civil wars distinguished by appalling savagery on both sides.
Although the Venezuelan Republic had been proclaimed on a whites-only franchise
in 1811, thereby excluding all Indians and blacks from “the nation”, and
although Bolivar himself was a slave-owner and to all intents and purposes
Spanish, on reconquering Caracas in 1813 he immediately likened all royalist
Spaniards to wandering Jews, to be “cast out and persecuted”, and declared:
“Any Spaniard who does not work against tyranny in favour of the just cause, by
the most active and effective means, shall be considered an enemy and punished
as a traitor to the country and in consequence shall inevitably be shot.
Spaniards and Canarios, depend upon it, you will die, even if you are simply
neutral, unless you actively espouse the liberation of America.”[421]
Bolivar was as good as his word, and proceeded to slaughter the whole Spanish
population of Caracas – whereupon the people he had supposedly come to
liberate, the Indians and blacks, both free and slave, marched against him
under the slogan of “Long live Ferdinand VII”! After murdering a further 1200
Spaniards in retaliation, Bolivar then harangued the inhabitants of Caracas,
saying: “You may judge for yourselves, without partiality, whether I have not
sacrificed my life, my being, every minute of my time in order to make a nation
of you.”[422]
Like his idol Napoleon, and many Latin
American caudillo strongmen since, Bolivar did not like the people
expressing its will in elections, which he called “the greatest scourge of
republics [which] produce only anarchy”. The liberator of Mexico, Agustin de
Iturbide, agreed, proclaiming himself Emperor in 1822. But such unrepublican
immodesty was nothing compared to Bolivar’s, who “hung in the dining room of
his villa outside Bogota a huge portrait of himself being crowned by two genii,
with the inscription: ‘Bolivar is the God of Colombia’.”[423]
Nor, in the end, did he have much time for
the people he had liberated. Shortly before his death in self-imposed exile in
Europe, he admitted that independence was the only benefit he had brought “at
the cost of everything else”, and declared: “America is ungovernable. Those who
have served the revolution have ploughed the sea. The only thing to do in
America is emigrate.”[424]
And again: “America can be ruled only by an able despotism.”[425]
Despotism also prevailed in another
“liberated” country of the region, Paraguay, where it became a “secular
replacement” for the former “Jesuit communist empire”.[426]
“After independence,” writes David Landes, “like other debris states of the
great Hispanic empire, Paraguay had fallen almost immediately under the control
of dictators. The laws said republic, but the practice was one-man rule – a mix
of benevolent despotism and populist tyranny. The first of these dictators…,
Dr. Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, was something special. A Jacobin ideologue,
and like many of the French variety, a lawyer by training, Francia was
committed to a republic of equals and him more equal than the rest. He was he
was the ‘organic leader’, the elitist embodying the popular will… Dr. Francia
and his successors, Lopez father and son, would turn the country into an
enlightened Sparta – egalitarian, literate, disciplined, and brave.”[427]
“It is generally accepted,” writes
Zamoyski, “that the former Spanish colonies never again achieved the wealth in
which they had basked before 1810. Some maintain that they were also better
governed, more lawful and more peaceful under Spanish rule than at any time
since, and there is something to be said for this view.
“Slavery was finally abolished in the
former Spanish colonies in the late 1850s, but economic slavery remained
endemic throughout the region. The manner in which independence and nationhood
were forced upon these societies gave rise to systemic instability. The various
Liberators could not count on devotion to a cause to animate their troops and
supporters, as the cause was imaginary. Nor could they mobilize one whole
section of the population on behalf of a specific interest for any length of
time. And they certainly could not depend on colleagues, who were bound, sooner
or later, to contest their authority. They therefore had to keep rearranging
alliances and decapitating any faction that grew too strong. In order to enlist
the loyalty and sympathy of the lower orders, they would make a point of
drawing these into the army. But as such recruits became professionals, they
cut their links with the classes they came from and grew into arrogant
Praetorians who carried with them an element of incipient mutiny.”[428]
Of course, there is a profound irony in
this. The cult of the nation introduced by article three of the Rights of Man
was meant to unite the peoples, not disunite them. But in fact it divided and
splintered Central and South America, as it had divided and splintered Europe.
Again, Napoleon’s coup was meant to save the revolution and its ideals of
liberty, equality and fraternity. In fact, however, it fired the imagination of
tin-pot dictators like Bolivar to destroy the peace and security of millions
around the world for the sake of their psychopathic dreams of personal glory.
Romanticism
and Nationalism
Reference has already been made to that
broader movement or set of attitudes, known as Romanticism, which fed
into the development of nationalism from the other side of the Rhine.
Romanticism was born as a reaction to the Enlightenment and, more generally, to
the whole classical, Greco-Roman concept of civilisation and life. If English
liberalism dominated the intellectual and cultural life of the early eighteenth
century, and the French Enlightenment, its intellectual offshoot, the later
part of the century, then German Romanticism dominated the intellectual and
cultural life of the nineteenth century.
Romanticism is very difficult to define.
Let us take two attempts to define it.
First, Jacques Barzun: “In Romanticism
thought and feeling are fused; its bent is toward exploration and discovery at
whatever risk of error of failure; the religious emotion is innate and demands
expression. Spirit is a reality but where it is placed varies and is secondary:
the divine may be reached through nature or art. The individual self is a
source of knowledge on which one must act; for one is embarked – engagé,
as the 20C Existentialists say. To act, enthusiasm must overcome indifference
or despair; impulse must be guided by imagination and reason. The search is for
truths, which reside in particulars, not in generalities; the world is bigger
and more complex than any set of abstractions, and it includes the past, which
is never fully done with. Meditating on past and present leads to the estimate
of man as great and wretched. But heroes are real and indispensable. They rise
out of the people, whose own mind-and-heart provides the makings of high
culture. The errors of heroes and peoples are the price of knowledge, religion,
and art, life itself being a heroic tragedy.”[429]
And secondly, Sir Isaiah Berlin: “Since
the Greeks, and perhaps long before them, men have believed that to the central
questions about the nature and purpose of their lives, and of the world in
which they lived, true, objective, universal and eternal answers could be
found. If the answers could not be discovered by me, then perhaps by someone
more expert or wiser than I; if not in the circumstances in which I found
myself, then in others more propitious: in an innocent and happy past – a
Garden of Eden from which our ancestors had for their sins been expelled, or
perhaps in a golden age that still lay in the future, which posterity (perhaps
after much labour and suffering) would, or at any rate could, one day reach. It
was assumed that all the truly central problems were soluble in principle even
if not in practice. Somewhere true answers to all genuine questions must exist,
if not in the minds of men, then in the mind of an omniscient being – real or
imaginary, material or ideal, a personal deity, or the universe come to full
consciousness of itself.
“This presupposition, which underlies most
classical and Christian thought, orthodox and heretical, scientific and
religious, was connected with the belief that, whether men knew it or not, the
whole of life on earth was in some sense bound up with the search for answer to
the great, tormenting questions of fact and of conduct; of what there is, was,
will be, can be; of what to do, what to live by, what to seek, hope for,
admire, fear, avoid; whether the end of life was happiness or justice or virtue
or self-fulfilment or grace and salvation. Individuals, schools of thought,
entire civilisations differed about what the answers were, about the proper
method of discovering them, about the nature and place of moral or spiritual or
scientific authority – that is to say, about how to identify the experts who
are qualified to discover and communicate the answers. They argued about what
constitutes such qualifications and justifies such claims to authority. But
there was no doubt that the truth lay somewhere; that it could in principle be
found. Conflicting beliefs were held about the central questions: whether the
truth was to be found in reason or in faith, in the Church or the laboratory,
in the insights of the uniquely privileged individual – a prophet, a mystic, an
alchemist, a metaphysician – or in the collective consciousness of a body of
men – the society of the faithful, the traditions of a tribe, a race, a nation,
a social class, an academy of experts, an elite of uniquely endowed or trained
beings – or, on the contrary, in the mind or heart of any man, anywhere, at any
time, provided that he remained innocent and uncorrupted by false doctrines.
What was common to all these views – incompatible enough for wars of
extermination to have been fought in their name – was the assumption that there
existed a reality, a structure of things, a rerum natura, which the
qualified enquirer could see, study and, in principle, get right. Men were
violently divided about the nature and identity of the wise – those who
understood the nature of things – but not about the proposition that such wise
men existed or could be conceived, and that they would know that which would
enable them to deduce correctly what men should believe, how they should act,
what they should live by and for.
“This was the great foundation of belief
which romanticism attacked and weakened. Whatever the differences between the
leading romantic thinkers – the early Schiller and the later Fichte, Schelling
and Jacobi, Tieck and the Schlegels when they were young, Chateaubriand and
Byron, Coleridge and Carlyle, Kierkegaard, Stirner, Nietzsche, Baudelaire –
there runs through their writings a common notion, held with varying degrees of
consciousness and depth, that truth is not an objective structure, independent
of those who seek it, the hidden treasure waiting to be found, but is itself in
all its guises created by the seeker. It is not to be brought into being
necessarily by the finite individual: according to some it is created by a
greater power, a universal spirit, personal or impersonal, in which the individual
is an element, or of which he is an aspect, an emanation, an imperfect
reflection. But the common assumption of the romantics that runs counter to the
philosophia perennis is that the answers to the great questions are not
to be discovered so much as to be invented. They are not something found, they
are something literally made. In its extreme Idealistic form it is a vision of
the entire world. In its more familiar form, it confines itself to the realm of
values, ideals, rules of conduct – aesthetic, religious, social, moral,
political – a realm seen not as a natural or supernatural order capable of
being investigated, described and explained by the appropriate method –
rational examination or some more mysterious procedure – but as something that man
creates, as he creates works of art; not by imitating, or even obtaining
illumination from, pre-existent models or truths, or by applying pre-existent
truths or rules that are objective, universal, eternal, unalterable but by an
act of creation, the introduction into the world of something literally novel –
the activity, natural or supernatural, human or in part divine, owing nothing
to anything outside it (in some versions because nothing can be conceived as
being outside it), self-subsistent, self-justified, self-fulfilling. Hence that
new emphasis on the subjective and ideal rather than the objective and the
real, on the process of creation rather than its effects, on motives rather
than consequences; and, as a necessary corollary of all this, on the quality of
the vision, the state of mind or soul of the acting agent – purity of heart,
innocence of intention, sincerity of purpose rather than getting the answer
right, that is, accurate correspondence to the ‘given’. Hence the emphasis on
activity, movement that cannot be reduced to static segments, the flow that
cannot be arrested, frozen, analysed without being thereby fatally distorted;
hence the constant protest against the reduction of ‘life’ to dead fragments,
of organism to ‘mere’ mechanical or uniform units; and the corresponding
tendency towards similes and metaphors drawn from ‘dynamic’ sciences – biology,
physiology, introspective psychology – and the worship of music, which, of all
the arts, appears to have the least relation to universally observable, uniform
natural order. Hence, too, the celebration of all forms of defiance directed
against the ‘given’ – the impersonal, the ‘brute fact’ in morals or in politics
– or against the static and the accepted, and the value placed on minorities and
martyrs as such, no matter what the ideal for which they suffered.
“This, too, is the source of the doctrine
that work is sacred as such, not because of its social function, but because it
is the imposition of the individual or collective personality, that is,
activity, upon inert stuff. The activity, the struggle is all, the victory
nothing: in Fichte’s words, ‘Frei sein ist nichts – frei werden ist der Himmel’
(‘To be free is nothing – to become free is very heaven’). Failure is nobler
than success. Self-immolation for a cause is the thing, not the validity of the
cause itself, for it is the sacrifice undertaken for its sake that sanctifies
the cause, not some intrinsic property of it.
“These are the symptoms of the romantic
attitude. Hence the worship of the artist, whether in sound, or word, or
colour, as the highest manifestation of the ever-active spirit, and the popular
image of the artist in his garret, wild-eyed, wild-haired, poor, solitary,
mocked-; but independent, free, spiritually superior to his philistine
tormentors. This attitude has a darker side too: worship not merely of the
painter or the composer or the poet, but of that more sinister artists whose
materials are men – the destroyer of old societies, and the creator of new ones
– no matter at what human cost: the superhuman leader who tortures and destroys
in order to build on new foundations – Napoleon in his most revolutionary
aspect. It is this embodiment of the romantic ideal that took more and more
hysterical forms and in its extreme ended in violent irrationalism and Fascism.
Yet this same outlook also bred respect for individuality, for the creative
impulse, for the unique, the independent, for freedom to live and act in the
light of personal, undictated beliefs and principles, of undistorted emotional
needs, for the value of personal life, of personal relationships, of the
individual conscience, of human rights. The positive and negative heritage of
romanticism – on the one hand contempt for opportunism, regard for individual
variety, scepticism of oppressive general formulae and final solutions, and on
the other self-prostration before superior beings and the exaltation of
arbitrary power, passion and cruelty – these tendencies, at once reflected and
promoted by romantic doctrines, have done more to mould both the events of our
century and the concepts in terms in which they are viewed and explained than
is commonly recognised in most histories of our time.”[430]
Romanticism was an individualist attitude par
excellence: but it had its collectivist analogues, including nationalism,
which may therefore be said to have been nurtured from the streams both of the
French Enlightenment and of the German Romantic anti-Enlightenment.
Thus “for Byronic romantics,” writes Berlin,
“’I’ is indeed an individual, the outsider, the adventurer, the outlaw, he who
defies society and accepted values, and follows his own – it may be to his
doom, but this is better than conformity, enslavement to mediocrity. But for
other thinkers ‘I’ becomes something much more metaphysical. It is a collective
– a nation, a Church, a Party, a class, an edifice in which I am only a stone,
an organism of which I am only a tiny living fragment. It is the
creator; I myself matter only in so far as I belong to the movement, the race,
the nation, the class, the Church; I do not signify as a true individual within
this super-person to whom my life is organically bound. Hence German
nationalism: I do this not because it is good or right or because I like it – I
do it because I am a German and this is the German way to live. So also modern
existentialism – I do it because I commit myself to this form of existence.
Nothing makes me; I do not do it because it is an objective order which I obey,
or because of universal rules to which I must adhere; I do it because I create
my own life as I do; being what I am, I give it direction and I am responsible
for it. Denial of universal values, this emphasis on being above all an element
in, and loyal to, a super-self, is a dangerous moment in European history, and
has led to a great deal that has been destructive and sinister in modern times;
this is where it begins, in the political ruminations and theories of the
earliest German romantics and their disciples in France and elsewhere.”[431]
Thus modern European nationalism may be
said to have been the fruit of the union of two ideas coming from two different
directions: the French Enlightenment idea of the sovereignty and rights
of the Nation, and the German Romantic idea of the uniqueness and self-justification
of the Nation.
German
Nationalism
However, if these were the general
ideological sources of modern nationalism, in the particular cases of French
and German nationalism the immediate causes were more mundane: in the French
case, pride, the pride of knowing that France was the first nation to proclaim
and realise the ideals of the revolution, and in the German case wounded pride
– the wound inflicted by Napoleon’s victories over the Germans, and the feeling
that Germany was always inferior to France culturally and politically.
German nationalism was therefore caused
by, in Berlin’s phrase, “wounds, some form of collective humiliation".[432]
These psychological wounds were to be the cause of many physical wounds in the
future…
In its early stages Kant, Hegel and Goethe
had all praised the Revolution; and Kant’s disciple, Fichte, had even declared
that “henceforth the French Republic alone can be the country of the Just”.
“But,” writes Zamoyski, “as the revolution progressed, the feeling grew in
Germany that the French, with their habitual shallowness, had got it all wrong.
They had allowed the pursuit of liberty to degenerate into mob rule and mass
slaughter of innocent people because they perceived liberty in mechanical
terms. German thinkers were more interested in ‘real liberty', and many
believed that it was the ‘corrupt’ nature of the French that had doomed the
revolution to failure. Such conclusions allowed for a degree of smugness,
suggesting as they did that the French Enlightenment, for all its brilliance,
had been flawed, while German intellectual achievements had been more profound
and more solid.
“Fichte identified Germany’s greatness as
lying in her essentially spiritual destiny. She would never stoop to conquer
others, and while nations such as the French, the English or the Spanish
scrambled for wealth and dominance, Germany’s role was to uphold the finest
values of humanity. Similar claims to a moral mission for Germany were made by
Herder, Hölderlin, Schlegel and others…
“It had been central to Herder’s argument
that each nation, by virtue of its innate character, had a special role to play
in the greater process of history. One after another, nations ascended the
world stage to fulfil their ordained purpose. The French were crowding the
proscenium, but there was a growing conviction that Germany’s time was coming,
and her destiny was about to unfold. The Germans certainly seemed ready for it.
The country was awash with under-employed young men, and since the days of the
proto-romantic movement of Sturm und Drang the concept of action, both
as a revolt against stultifying rational forces and as a transcendent act of
self-assertion, had become well established. Fichte equated virtually any
action, provided it was bold unfettered, with liberation.
“The problem was that the nation was still
not properly constituted. Some defined it by language and culture, or, like
Fichte, by a level of consciousness. The Germans were, according to him, more
innately creative than other nations, being the only genuine people in Europe,
an Urvolk, speaking the only authentic language, Ursprache.
Others saw the nation as a kind of church, defined by the ‘mission’ of the
German people. Adam Müller affirmed that this mission was to serve
humanity with charity, and that any man who dedicated himself to this common
purpose should be considered a German. In his lectures of 1806, Fichte made the
connection between committed action and nationality. Those who stood up and
demonstrated their vitality were part of the Urvolk, those who did not
were un-German. Hegel saw the people as a spiritual organism, whose expression,
the collective spirit or Volksgeist, was its validating religion. The
discussion mingled elements of theology, science and metaphysics to produce
uplifting and philosophically challenging confusion.
“But in the absence of clear geographical
or political parameters, Germany’s national existence was ultimately dependent
on some variant of the racial concept. And this began to be stated with
increasing assertiveness. ‘In itself every nationality is a completely closed
and rounded whole, a common tie of blood relationship unites all its members;
all… must be of one mind and must stick together like one man’, according to
Joseph Görres, who had once been an enthusiastic internationalist. ‘This
instinctive urge that binds all members into a whole is a law of nature which
takes preference over all artificial contracts… The voice of nature in ourselves
warns us and points to the chasm between us and the alien’.
“The location and identification of this
‘closed and rounded whole’ involved not just defining German ethnicity, but
also delving into the past in search of a typically German and organic national
unit to set against the old rationalist French view of statehood based on
natural law and the rights of man. The bible of this tendency was Tacitus’s Germania.
Placed in its own time, this book is as much about Rome as about Germanic
tribes. It imagines the ultimate non-Rome, a place that had not been cleared
and cultivated, and a people innocent of the arts of industry and leisure. The
forest life it describes is the antithesis to the classical culture of Rome. It
is also in some ways the original noble savage myth, representing everything
that decadent Rome had lost; beneath Tacitus’s contempt for the savage denizens
of the forest lurks a vague fear that by gaining in civilization the Romans had
forfeited certain rugged virtues.[433]
“The German nationalists picked up this
theme, which mirrored their relation to French culture. Roma and Germania, the
city and the forest, corruption and purity, could stand as paradigms for the
present situation. The ancient Teutonic hero Arminius (Hermann) had led the
revolt of the German tribes against Rome and defeated the legions in the
Teutoburg Forest. His descendants who aspired to throw off the ‘Roman’
universalism of France could take heart.”[434]
Dostoyevsky developed the theme of Germany
versus Rome in an illuminating manner: “Germany’s aim is one; it existed
before, always. It is her Protestantism – not that single formula of
Protestantism which was conceived in Luther’s time, but her continual
Protestantism, her continual protest against the Roman world, ever since
Arminius, - against everything that was Rome and Roman in aim, and subsequently
– against everything that was bequeathed by ancient Rome to the new Rome and to
all those peoples who inherited from Rome her idea, her formula and element; against
the heir of Rome and everything that constitutes this legacy…
“Ancient Rome was the first to generate
the idea of the universal unity of men, and was the first to start thinking of
(and firmly believing in) putting it practically into effect in the form of
universal empire. However, this formula fell before Christianity – the formula
but not the idea. For this idea is that of European mankind; through this idea
its civilization came into being; for it alone mankind lives.
“Only the idea of the universal Roman
empire succumbed, and it was replaced by a new ideal, also universal, of a
communion in Christ. This new ideal bifurcated into the Eastern ideal of a
purely spiritual communion of men, and the Western European, Roman Catholic,
papal ideal diametrically opposed to the Eastern one.
“This Western Roman Catholic incarnation
of the idea was achieved in its own way, having lost, however, its Christian,
spiritual foundation and having replaced it with the ancient Roman legacy.
[The] Roman papacy proclaimed that Christianity and its idea, without the
universal possession of lands and peoples, are not spiritual but political. In
other words, they cannot be achieved without the realization on earth of a new
universal Roman empire now headed not by the Roman emperor but by the Pope. And
thus it was sought to establish a new universal empire in full accord with the
spirit of the ancient Roman world, only in a different form.
“Thus, we have in the Eastern ideal –
first, the spiritual communion of mankind in Christ, and thereafter, in
consequence of the spiritual unity of all men in Christ and as an unchallenged
deduction therefrom – a just state and social communion. In the Roman
interpretation we have a reverse situation: first it is necessary to achieve
firm state unity in the form of a universal empire, and only after that,
perhaps, spiritual fellowship under the rule of the Pope as the potentate of
this world.
“Since that time, in the Roman world this
scheme has been progressing and changing uninterruptedly, and with its progress
the most essential part of the Christian element has been virtually lost.
Finally, having rejected Christianity spiritually, the heirs of the ancient
Roman world likewise renounced [the] papacy. The dreadful French revolution has
thundered. In substance, it was but the last modification and metamorphosis of
the same ancient Roman formula of universal unity. The new formula, however,
proved insufficient. The new idea failed to come true. There even was a moment
when all the nations which had inherited the ancient Roman tradition were
almost in despair. Oh, of course, that portion of society which in 1789 won
political leadership, i.e. the bourgeoisie, triumphed and declared that there
was no necessity of going any further. But all those minds which by virtue of
the eternal laws of nature are destined to dwell in a state of everlasting
universal fermentation seeking new formulae of some ideal and a new word
indispensable to the progress of the human organism, - they all rushed to the
humiliated and the defrauded, to all those who had not received their share in
the new formula of universal unity proclaimed by the French revolution of 1789.
These proclaimed a new word of their own, namely, the necessity of universal
fellowship not for the equal distribution of rights allotted to a quarter, or
so, of the human race, leaving the rest to serve as raw material and a means of
exploitation for the happiness of that quarter of mankind, but, on the contrary
– for universal equality, with each and every one sharing the blessings of this
world, whatever these may prove. It was decided to put this scheme into effect
by resorting to all means, i.e., not by the means of Christian
civilisation – without stopping at anything.
“Now, what has been Germany’s part in this,
throughout these two thousand years? The most characteristic and essential
trait of this great, proud and peculiar people – ever since their appearance on
the historical horizon – consisted of the fact that they never consented to
assimilate their destiny and their principles to those of the outermost Western
world, i.e. the heirs of the ancient Roman tradition. The Germans have been protesting
against the latter throughout these two thousand years. And even though they
did not (never did so far) utter ‘their word’, or set forth their strictly
formulated ideal in lieu of the ancient Roman idea, nevertheless, it seems
that, within themselves, they always were convinced that they were capable of
uttering this ‘new word’ and of leading mankind. They struggled against the
Roman world as early as the times of Arminius, and during the epoch of Roman
Christianity they, more than any other nation, struggled for the sovereign
power against the new Rome.
“Finally, the Germans protested most
vehemently, deriving their formula of protest from the innermost spiritual,
elemental foundation of the Germanic world: they proclaimed the freedom of
inquiry, and raised Luther’s banner. This was a terrible, universal break: the
formula of protest had been found and filled with a content; even so it still
was a negative formula, and the new, positive word was not yet uttered.
“And now, the Germanic spirit, having
uttered this ‘new word’ of protest, as it were, fainted for a while, quite
parallel to an identical weakening of the former strictly formulated unity of
the forces of his adversary. The outermost Western world, under the influence
of the discovery of America, of new sciences and new principles, sought to
reincarnate itself in a new truth, in a new phase.
“When, at the time of the French
revolution, the first attempt at such a reincarnation took place, the Germanic
spirit became quite perplexed, and for a time lost its identity and faith in
itself. It proved impotent to say anything against the new ideas of the
outermost Western world. Luther’s Protestantism had long outlived its time,
while the idea of free inquiry had long been accepted by universal science.
Germany’s enormous organism more than ever began to feel that it had no flesh,
so to speak, and no form for self-expression. It was then that the pressing
urge to consolidate itself, at least outwardly, into a harmonious organism was
born in Germany in anticipation of the new future aspects of her eternal struggle
against the outermost Western world…”[435]
“The pressing urge to consolidate itself,
at least outwardly, into a harmonious organism” could only be satisfied by the
creation of a powerful state. And the prophet of this state, the German Reich,
was Fichte.
“Fichte,” writes Paul Johnson, “was much
impressed by Niccolò Machiavelli and saw life as a continuing struggle
for supremacy among the nations. The nation-state most likely to survive and
profit from this struggle was the one which extended its influence over the
lives of its people most widely. And such a nation-state – Germany was the
obvious example – would naturally be expansive. ‘Every nation wants to
disseminate as widely as possible the good points which are peculiar to it.
And, in so far as it can, it wants to assimilate the entire human race to
itself in accordance with an urge planted in men by God, an urge on which the
community of nations, the friction between them, and their development towards
perfection rest.’
“This was a momentous statement because it
gave the authority of Germany’s leading academic philosopher to the proposition
that the power impulse of the state was both natural and healthy, and it placed
the impulse in the context of a moral world view. Fichte’s state was
totalitarian and expansive, but it was not revolutionary. Its ‘prince” ruled by
hereditary divine right. But ‘the prince belongs to his nation just as wholly
and completely as it belongs to him. Its destiny under divine providence is
laid in his hands, and he is responsible for it.’ So the prince’s public acts
must be moral, in accordance with law and justice, and his private life must be
above reproach. In relations between states, however, ‘there is neither law nor
justice, only the law of strength. This relationship places the divine,
sovereign fights of fate and of world rule in the prince’s hands, and it raises
him above the commandments of personal morals and into a higher moral order
whose essence is contained in the words, Salus et decus populi suprema lex
esto.’ This was an extreme and menacing statement that justified any degree
of ruthlessness by the new, developing nation-state in its pursuit of
self-determination and self-preservation. The notion of a ‘higher moral order’,
to be determined by the state’s convenience, was to find expression, in the 20th
century, in what Lenin called ‘the Revolutionary Conscience’ and Hitler ‘the
Higher Law of the Party’. Moreover, there was no doubt what kind of state
Fichter had in mind. It was not only totalitarian but German. In his Addresses
to the German Nation (1807), he laid down as axiomatic that the state of
the future can only be the national state, in particular the German national
state, the German Reich.”[436]
“The process of national revival,” writes
Zamoyski, “was given a jolt and a fillip by Napoleon’s crushing defeat of the
Prussians at the Battle of Jena in 1806. The humiliation of seeing the
prestigious army created by the great Frederick trounced by the French led to
painful self-appraisal and underlined the need for regeneration. But it also
stung German pride and dispelled the last shreds of sympathy for France – and,
with them, the universalist dreams of the previous decade.
“The French became villains, and Napoleon
himself was even portrayed as the Antichrist, a focus for the crusading
struggle of deliverance that would regenerated Germany. Poets composed
patriotic verse and anti-Napoleonic songs..
“An analogous wave of renewal swept
through society. In 1808 the Tugenbund or League of Virtue, a society for the
propagation of civic virtue, was formed in Königsberg and quickly ramified
through Prussia. In 1809 Ludwig Jahn founded the more middle-class Deutsche
Bund, based in Berlin. Joseph Görres demanded that all foreign elements be
expunged from national life, so that essential German characteristics might
flourish, and declared that no power could stand in the way of a nation intent
on defending its soul. ‘That to which the Germans aspire will be granted to
them, the day when, in their interior, they will have become worthy of it.’
Even the archetypically Enlightenment cosmopolitan Wilhelm von Humboldt was
turning into a Prussian patriot. He was reorganizing the state education system
at the time, and manage to transform it into a curiously spiritual one in which
education and religion of state are inextricably intertwined.
“But while the mood changed, reality had
not. Germany was still divided and cowered under French hegemony. To the deep
shame of much of her officer corps, Prussia was still an ally of France when
Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812. Her forces, which did not take part in the
march on Moscow, were to support the French and secure their flank in East
Prussia. And it was when the frozen remnants were trudging back into Prussia
and Poland that this support would have been most welcome. But it was precisely
then that the Prussian military judged it safe to show their colours. General
von Yorck, in command of 14,000 men in East Prussia, found himself in a pivotal
position. With his support, Marshal Macdonald would be able to hold the line of
the River Niemen and keep the Russians out of Poland; without it, he had no
option but full retreat. The Prussian general had been in touch with the Russians
for some time, through the intermediary of a young German officer in Russian
service by the name of Carl von Clausewitz. On Christmas Day 1812 Yorck met the
commander of the Russian advance guard and, by a convention he signed with them
at Tauroggen, repudiated Prussia’s alliance with France. It was an act of
mutiny, the first in a series of acts by the German army to ‘save’ the
fatherland against the orders of its political leaders. It was also the signal
for all the nationalists to come out into the open.
“The irascible Ernst Moritz Arndt was well
to the fore. ‘Oh men of Germany!’ he exhorted, ‘feel again your God, hear and
fear the eternal, and you heard and fear also your Volk; you feel again
in God the honour and dignity of your fathers, their glorious history
rejuvenates itself again in you, their firm and gallant virtue reblossoms in
you, the whole German Fatherland stands again before you in the august halo of
past centuries… One faith, one love, one courage, and one enthusiasm must gather
again the whole German Volk in brotherly community… Be Germans, be one,
will to be one by love and loyalty, and no devil will vanquish you.’
“The king of Prussia did not feel quite
brave enough to ‘be German’ yet. He ordered the arrest of Yorck, and then moved
to Breslau, where he was out of reach of the French. In March 1813, when he saw
that it was safe for him to jump on the anti-Napoleon bandwagon, Frederick
William announced the formation of citizens’ volunteer forces, the Landwehr and
the Landsturm. On 17 March he issued a proclamation to the effect that his
soldiers would ‘fight for our independence and the honour of the Volk’,
and summoned every son of the fatherland to participate. ‘My cause is the cause
of my Volk,’ he concluded, less than convincingly. But nobody was
looking too closely at anyone’s motives in the general excitement. The cause of
the German fatherland justified everything. ‘Strike them dead!’ Heinrich von
Kleist had urged the soldiers setting off to war with the French. ‘At the last
judgement you will not be asked for your reasons!’
“The campaign of 1813, when the patched-up
Napoleonic forces attempted to stand up to the combined armies of Russia,
Prussia, Sweden and Austria, and finally succumbed at Leipzig, should, according
to Chateaubriand, go down in history as ‘the campaign of young Germany, of the
poets’. That was certainly the perception. The by no means young Fichte
finished his lecture on the subject of duty and announced to his students at
Berlin that the course was suspended until they gained liberty or death. He
marched out of the hall amid wild cheers, and led the students off to put their
names down for the army…
“The War of Liberation, Freiheitskrieg,
was, above all, a war of purification and self-discovery. It did not stop with
the expulsion of French forces from Germany in 1813. If anything, it was in the
course of 1814, when Napoleon's forces were fighting for survival on French
soil, that the War of Liberation really got going in Germany…
“But the War of Liberation was being waged
no less vehemently at the cultural level. The poets were not squeamish when it
came to singing of the national crusade, while the painters rallied to the
cause in a memorable way. Caspar David Friedrich, who had already done so much
to represent the symbolic German landscape as an object of worship through a
series of paintings in which people are depicted contemplating its wonder like
so many saints adoring the nativity in a medieval triptych, now turned to
glorifying the nation. He painted several representations of an imaginary tomb
of Hermann, evocatively set among craggy boulders and fir trees. And he also
produced various set-pieces representing the war. Other painters depicted
groups of patriotic German volunteers going forth in their hats to free the
fatherland. Joseph Görres led a movement demanding the completion of
Cologne Cathedral as a sign of German regeneration. ‘Long shall Germany live in
shame and humiliation, a prey to inner conflict and alien arrogance, until her
people return to the ideals from which they were seduced by selfish ambition,
and until true religion and loyalty, unity of purpose and self-denial shall
again render them capable of erecting such a building as this,’ he wrote.”[437]
And yet the majority of the German people
no longer believed either in the Catholicism that had erected Cologne
cathedral, nor in the Protestantism that had first raised the word of protest
against the Franco-Roman world and civilisation. As so often happens with
nationalistic movements, the attempt to resurrect the past was actually a sign
that the past was definitely dead. Thus European nationalism, of which German
nationalism was perhaps the most characteristic example, was a new,
degenerate religion taking up the void in the European soul that was left by
the death of Christianity.
“The nation,” writes Mosse, “was the
intermediary between the individual and a personal scheme of values and ethics;
outside the nation no life or creativity was possible.”[438]
From now on, European man would only rarely be induced to die for God or Church
or sovereign. But he could be induced to die for his country. And that not
simply because it is natural to die for hearth and home, but because the nation
was now seen to incarnate the highest value, whether that value was defined as
simply racial superiority (Germany), or cultural eminence (France), or the rule
of law in freedom (England).
At the same time, Mosse argues, “it must
never be forgotten that the vision of a better life was a part of all
nationalisms. In none of the [nationalist] ideologies discussed was the worship
of the nation something in and of itself; it was always the necessary way to a
better life, a new freedom… All believed that once they had been united by a
true national spirit greater happiness for everybody would be the result.”[439]
This was true, however, only in the
beginning, in the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was still
closely integrated with the romantic reaction against the destructive,
anti-traditional Enlightenment programme, when thinkers were trying to combine
universalism with local traditions and the sacredness of the individual. It was
already becoming rarer when the famous Italian nationalist, Giovanni Mazzini, declared,
in the 1850s: “I believe in the immense voice of God which the centuries
transmit to me through the universal tradition of Humanity; and it tells me
that the Family, the Nation and Humanity are the three spheres within which the
human individual has to labour for a common end, for the moral
perfecting of himself and of others, or rather of himself through others and
for others.”[440]
But already in 1838, K.A. Aksakov, a
fervent admirer of Germany, found something very different on his first visit to
that country: “Now I do not immediately say that I am Russian after that
displeasure I noticed towards us in the Prussians”.[441]
For in Germany nationalism was indeed becoming “the worship of the nation… in
and of itself”…
The
Council of Vienna
“European politics in the nineteenth
century,” writes Golo Mann, “fed on the French Revolution. No idea, no dream,
no fear, no conflict appeared which had not been worked through in that fateful
decade [or two]: democracy and socialism, reaction, dictatorship, nationalism,
imperialism, pacifism.”[442]
However, of these ideas the one that dominated immediately after the defeat of
Napoleon was reaction.
Napoleon’s escape from Elba in 1814, and
the closeness of the struggle that finally succeeded in overthrowing him in
1815, meant that, as Davies writes, the Congress of Vienna that reconvened
after Waterloo “met in chastened mood. The representatives of the victorious
powers could not be accused, as in the previous year, of ‘dancing instead of
making progress’. They were ready to risk nothing. They were determined, above
all, to restore the rights of monarchy – the sacred institution considered most
threatened by the Revolution. In so doing they paid little attention to the
claims either of democracy or of nationality….
“The spirit of the settlement, therefore,
was more than conservative: it actually put the clock back. It was designed to
prevent change in a world where the forces of change had only been contained by
a whisker. The Duke of Wellington’s famous comment on Waterloo was: ‘a damned
nice thing, the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’. Such was the
feeling all over Europe. The issue between change and no change was so close
that the victors felt terrified of the least concession. Even limited, gradual
reform was viewed with suspicion. ‘Beginning reform,’ wrote the Duke in 1830,
‘is beginning revolution.’ What is more, France, the eternal source of
revolutionary disturbances, had not been tamed. Paris was to erupt repeatedly –
in 1830, 1848, 1851, 1870. ‘When Paris sneezes,’ commented the Austrian
Chancellor, Metternich, ‘Europe catches cold.’ French-style democracy was a
menace threatening monarch, Church, and property – the pillars of everything he
stood for. It was, he said, ‘the disease which must be cured, the volcano which
must be extinguished, the gangrene which must be burned out with a hot iron,
the hydra with jaws open to swallow up the social order’.
“In its extreme form, as embodied by
Metternich, the reactionary spirit of 1815 was opposed to any sort of change
which did not obtain prior approval. It found expression in the first instance
in the Quadruple Alliance of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain, who agreed
to organize future congresses whenever need arose, and then in a wider ‘Holy
Alliance’ organized by the Tsar. The former produced the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), which readmitted France to the concert of respectable
nations. The latter produced the proposal that the powers should guarantee
existing frontiers and governments in perpetuity.”[443]
In readmitting France so soon, the
victorious powers correctly identified an ideology, Jacobinism, rather than a
nation, France, as the real enemy that had to be scotched. (In 1919, the
Versailles Treaty expressed the opposite, erroneous opinion: that a nation,
Germany, was the real enemy, rather than any revolutionary ideology.) Why?
Because, as Eric Hobsbawn writes, “it was now known that revolution in a single
country could be a European phenomenon; that its doctrines could spread across
the frontiers and, what was worse, its crusading armies could blow away the
political systems of a continent. It was now known that social revolution was
possible; that nations existed as something independent of states, peoples as
something independent of their rulers, and even that the poor existed as
something independent of the ruling classes. ‘The French Revolution,’ De Bonald
had observed in 1796, ‘is a unique event in history.’ The phrase is misleading:
it was a universal event.[444]
No country was immune from it. The French soldiers who campaigned from
Andalusia to Moscow, from the Baltic to Syria – over a vaster area than any
body of conquerors since the Mongols, and certainly a vaster area than any
previous single military force in Europe except the Norsemen – pushed the
universality of their revolution home more effectively than anything else could
have done. And the doctrines and institutions they carried with them, even
under Napoleon, from Spain to Illyria, were universal doctrines, as the
governments knew, and as the peoples themselves were soon to know. A Greek
bandit and patriot expressed their feelings completely: “’According to my
judgement,’ said Koloktrones, ‘the French Revolution and the doings of Napoleon
opened the eyes of the world. The nations knew nothing before, and the people
thought that kings were gods upon the earth and that they were bound to say
that whatever they did was well done. Through this present change it is more
difficult to rule the people.’”[445]
The
French revolution had another long-term effect: it justified all kinds of crime
in the name of politics. And this had a coarsening effect on the enemies of the
revolution, too. As Paul Johnson writes: “Perhaps the most significant
characteristic of the dawning modern world, and in this respect it was a true
child of Rousseau, was the tendency to relate everything to politics. In Latin
America, every would-be plunderer or ambitious bandit now called himself a
‘liberator’; murderers killed for freedom, thieves stole for the people. In
Spain, during the 1820s, believers and nonbelievers, those who liked kings and
those who hated them, began to regard their faith, or lack of it, as a
justification for forming private armies which defied the lawful authorities.
Organized crime now took a party label and put forward a program and thereby
became better organized and a more formidable threat to society.
“Thus violence acquired moral standing and
the public was terrorized for its own good. Many years before, Samuel Johnson,
in upholding the rights of authority, had qualified his defense by pointing to
a corresponding and inherent human right to resist oppresssion: ‘Why all this
childish jealousy of the power of the Crown?… In no government can power be abused
long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great
degree, they will rise and cut off his head.’ The French Revolution had lowered
the threshold of abuse at which men rose. It proved that cutting off royal
heads was easier than had previously been thought and did not bring down the
heavens. That undoubted fact was now a permanent temptation to every enemy of
society who wished to acquire moral respectability for his crimes. It operated,
in particular, throughout the Mediterranean area, where every government
oppressed its subjects to some degree and there were usually no lawful forms of
redress. In the past, men with a grievance had suffered in silence or taken to
the hills and robbed. Now the hitherto resigned joined secret societies, and
the bandits called themselves politicians.”[446]
These secret societies continued the
revolution on an international scale. Johnson again: “Like the Comintern in the
1930s, they were a European phenomenon and, to some extent, coordinated and
centrally directed. But unlike the Comintern, they did not have an ultimate
national base, where they could be trained and from which money and arms could
flow.
“The most important figure, or so it was
supposed, was Filipo Michele Buonarrotti (1761-1837), a Pisan by birth, and
proud of his descent from Michelangelo. Becoming a naturalized French citizen,
he took part in the French Revolution and was imprisoned and deported for his
part in the conspiracy organized by François-Emile Babeuf, the proto-communist
who tried to overthrow the Directory. He came out of prison in 1809 and
immediately resumed underground work in northern Italy with Republican elements
in the French occupation and local malcontents and ‘patriots’. He founded a
network called the Adelphi, which migrated to Geneva when the Austrians took
over Lombardy and changed its name to the Sublime Perfect Masters.
“The Sublime Perfect Masters combined
illuminism, freemasonry and radical politics with a good deal of pretentious
symbolism. Its structure was hierarchical, only the most senior levels knowing
its inner secrets, and Buonarrotti came closer to the isolated cell system of
modern terrorist groups, which makes them so difficult to destroy, even if
penetrated. The various police forces never discovered much about his
apparatus, which is the reason we know so little about it. In theory it was
formidable, since it had links with a Directive Committee in Paris which
coordinated Orléanist, Jacobin, Bonapartist, and Republican subversion,
with various German groups, such as the Tugendbund and the Unbedingren; with
Spanish Masons and communeros; and even with a Russian group called the
Union of Salvation, the whole supposedly existing under a mysterious body, also
in Geneva, called the Grand Firmament. In Italy, the Sublime Perfect Masters
had links with the Carbonari, which operated in the center and the south.
Contact was maintained by special handshakes, secret codes, invisible ink and
other devices… But it is a notable fact that Buonarrotti, in particular, and
the networks, in general, never once succeeded in organizing a successful
conspiracy or one which can fairly be said to have got off the ground. Moreover
when uprisings did take place and governments were overthrown, as in Spain in
1820, Buonarrotti – like Marx, and indeed Lenin, later – was taken completely
by surprise…”[447]
The major powers had many problems in
their struggle against the revolution. One was that it required large resources
and in particular a much larger police (and secret police) apparatus than any
state had hitherto possessed. Secondly, the powers were not united amongst
themselves. France and Russia still distrusted each other after the horrors of
1812. Britain, which had played such an important role in defeating Napoleon,
was nevertheless not averse to helping this or that revolutionary movement
(particularly in the Iberian Peninsula[448]
and South America) if this suited her balance-of-power politics, and was
strongly opposed to “interventionism on ideological grounds, as practiced by
the Holy Alliance, because its object was to impose or sustain a particular
type of government, which ran directly counter to the Zeitgeist”.[449]
Even the absolutist rulers felt they could not go completely counter to the
Zeitgeist. They made their first compromise with the revolution in the
conditions they imposed on France in 1818. For, as Hobsbawm writes, while “the
Bourbons were restored,… it was understood that they had to make concessions to
the dangerous spirit of their subjects. The major changes of the Revolution
were accepted, and that inflammatory device, a constitution, was granted to
them – though of course in an extremely moderate form – under the guise of a
Charter ‘freely conceded’ by the returned absolute monarch, Louis XVIII.”[450]
The power of the Zeitgeist was shown when
Wellington, the “iron duke”, the conqueror of Napoleon and enemy of all
liberalism, was forced out of office when he opposed an extension of the
franchise in England, which became a reality in the Reform Act of 1832…
And yet these concessions showed not only
how frightened of the revolution the major powers still were, but also how
little idea they had of how to combat it. For appeasement, as rulers from
Ethelred the Unready to Joseph Chamberlain have discovered, can never tame a
really determined enemy, just as throwing meat to a ravenous dog only does not
permanently assuage his hunger: it encourages him to demand more. This is not
to say that savage repression, or a simple desire to turn the clock back, in
and of itself is sufficient to extirpate the disease (the overthrow of Louis
XVIII’s successor, his ultra-conservative brother Charles X[451],
in the revolution of July, 1830 proved that: positive teaching is also
required, the teaching of a positive doctrine of political authority that is
deeply and surely grounded in Orthodox Christianity. But none of the great
powers was able to provide a positive teaching to reinforce and justify their
alternately conciliatory and repressive measures, for the simple reason that
none of them – with the exception of Russia – was Orthodox, and very few even
in Russia were capable of communicating that message to those infected with the
revolutionary contagion.
What
the great powers did have was a negative teaching, a teaching on the evil of
the revolution that had some truth in it, but, precisely because it was only
negative, little effectiveness. The most fervently anti-revolutionary power, as
was to be expected, was the Vatican, which was trying to make up for its lapse
in the time of Napoleon. Thus in his encylical
Mirari vos (1832), Pope Gregory XVI declared that anti-monarchism
was a crime against the faith, and that liberty of conscience flowed from “the
most fetid fount of indifferentism”. But the most eloquent defenders of the old
order was Joseph de Maistre.
“What the entire Enlightenment has in
common,” writes Berlin, “is denial of the central Christian doctrine of
original sin, believing instead that man is born either innocent and good, or
morally neutral and malleable by education or environment, or, at worst, deeply
defective but capable of radical and indefinite improvement by rational
education in favourable circumstances, or by a revolutionary reorganisation of
society as demanded, for example, by Rousseau. It is this denial of original
sin that the Church condemned most severely in Rousseau’s Émile,
despite its attack on materialism, utilitarianism and atheism. It is the power
reaffirmation of this Pauline and Augustinian doctrine that is the sharpest
single weapon in the root-and-branch attack on the entire Enlightenment by the
French counter-revolutionary writers Maistre, Bonald and Chateaubriand, at the
turn of the century.
“… The doctrines of Joseph de Maistre and
his followers and allies… formed the spearhead of the counter-revolution in the
early nineteenth century in Europe. Maistre held the Enlightenment to be one of
the most foolish, as well as the most ruinous, forms of social thinking. The
conception of man as naturally disposed to benevolence, co-operation and peace,
or, at any rate, capable of being shaped in this direction by appropriate
education or legislation, is for him shallow and false. The benevolent Dame
Nature of Hume, Holbach and Helvétius is an absurd figment. History and
zoology are the most reliable guides to nature: they show her to be a field of
unceasing slaughter. Men are by nature aggressive and destructive; they rebel
over trifles – the change to the Gregorian calendar in the mid-eighteenth
century, or Peter the Great’s decision to shave the boyars’ beards, provoke
violent resistance, at times dangerous rebellions. But when men are sent to
war, to exterminate beings as innocent as themselves for no purpose that either
army can grasp, they go obediently to their deaths and scarcely ever mutiny.
When the destructive instinct is evoked men feel exalted and fulfilled. Men do
not come together, as the Enlightenment teaches, for mutual co-operation and
peaceful happiness; history makes it clear that they are never so united as
when given a common altar upon which to immolate themselves. This is so because
the desire to sacrifice themselves or others is at least as strong as any
pacific or constructive impulse.
“Maistre felt that men are by nature evil,
self-destructive animals, full of conflicting drives, who do not know what they
want, want what they do not want, do not want what they want, and it is only
when they are kept under constant control and rigorous discipline by some
authoritarian elite – a Church, a State, or some other body from whose
decisions there is no appeal – that they can hope to survive and be saved.
Reasoning, analysis, criticism shake the foundations and destroy the fabric of
society. If the source of authority is declared to be rational, it invites
questioning and doubt; but if it is questioned it may be argued away; its
authority is undermined by able sophists, and this accelerates the forces of
chaos, as in France during the reign of the weak and liberal Louis XVI. If the
State is to survive and frustrate the fools and knaves who will always seek to
destroy it, the source of its authority must be absolute, so terrifying,
indeed, that the least attempt to question it must entail immediate and
terrible sanctions: only then will men learn to obey it. Without a clear
hierarchy of authority – awe-inspiring power – men’s incurably destructive
instincts will breed chaos and mutual extermination. The supreme power –
especially the Church – must never seek to explain or justify itself in
rational terms; for what one man can demonstrate, another may be able to
refute. Reason is the thinnest of walls against the raging seas of violent
emotion: on so insecure a basis no permanent structure can ever be erected.
Irrationality, so far from being an obstacle, has historically led to peace,
security and strength, and is indispensable to society: it is rational
institutions – republics, elective monarchies, democracies, associations
founded on the enlightened principles of free love – that collapse soonest;
authoritarian Churches, hereditary monarchies and aristocracies, traditional
forms of life, like the highly irrational institutions of the family, founded
on life-long marriage – it is they that persist.
“The philosophes proposed to
rationalise communications by inventing a universal language free from the
irrational survivals, the idiosyncratic twists and turns, the capricious
peculiarities of existing tongues; if they were to succeed, this would be
disastrous, for it is precisely the individual historical development of a
language belonging to a people that absorbs, enshrines and encapsulates a vast
wealth of half-conscious, half-remembered collective experience. What men call
superstition and prejudice are but the crust of custom which by sheer survival
has shown itself proof against the ravages and vicissitudes of its long life;
to lose it is to lose the shield that protects men’s national existence, their
spirit, the habits, memories, faith that have made them what they are. The
conception of human nature which the radical critics have promulgated and on
which their whole house of cards rests is an infantile fantasy. Rousseau asks
why it is that man, who was born free, is nevertheless everywhere in chains;
Maistre replies, ‘This mad pronouncement, Man is born free, is the opposite of
the truth.’ ‘It would be equally reasonable,’ adds the eminent critic
Émile Faguet in an essay on Maistre, ‘to say that sheep are born
carnivorous, and everywhere nibble grass.’ Men are not made for freedom, nor
for peace. Such freedom and peace as they have had were obtained only under
wisely authoritarian governments that have repressed the destructive critical
intellect and its socially disintegrating effects. Scientists, intellectuals,
lawyers, journalists, democrats, Jansenists, Protestants, Jews, atheists –
these are the sleepless enemy that never ceases to gnaw at the vitals of
society. The best government the world has ever known was that of the Romans:
they were too wise to be scientists themselves; for this purpose they hired the
clever, volatile, politically incapable Greeks. Not the luminous intellect, but
dark instincts govern man and societies; only elites which understand this, and
keep the people from too much secular education, which is bound to make them
over-critical and discontented, can give to men as much happiness and justice
and freedom as, in this vale of tears, men can expect to have. But at the back
of everything must lurk the potentiality of force, of coercive power.
“In a striking image Maistre says that all
social order in the end rests upon one man, the executioner. Nobody wishes to
associate with this hideous figure, yet on him, so long as men are weak,
sinful, unable to control their passions, constantly lured to their doom by
evil temptations or foolish dreams, rest all order, all peace, all society. The
notion that reason is sufficient to educate or control the passions is
ridiculous. When there is a vacuum, power rushes in; even the bloodstained
monster Robespierre, a scourge sent by the Lord to punish a country that had
departed from the true faith, is more to be admired – because he did hold
France together and repelled her enemies, and created armies that, drunk with
blood and passion, preserved France – than liberal fumbling and bungling. Louis
XIV ignored the clever reasoners of his time, suppressed heresy, and died full
of glory in his own bed. Louis XVI played amiably with subversive ideologists
who had drunk at the poisoned well of Voltaire, and died on the scaffold.
Repression, censorship, absolute sovereignty, judgements from which there is no
appeal, these are the only methods of governing creatures whom Maistre
described as half men, half beasts, monstrous centaurs at once seeking after
God and fighting him, longing to love and create, but in perpetual danger of
falling victims to their own blindly destructive drives, held in check by a
combination of force and traditional authority and, above all, a faith
incarnated in historically hallowed institutions that reason dare not touch.
“Nation and race are realities; the
artificial creations of constitution-mongers are bound to collapse. ‘Nations,’
said Maistre, ‘are born and die like individuals’; they ‘have a common soul’, especially
visible in their language. And since they are individuals, they should
endeavour to remain of one race. So too Bonald, his closest intellectual ally,
regrets that the French nation has abandoned its racial purity, thus weakening
itself. The question of whether the French are descended from Franks or Gauls,
whether their institutions are Roman or German in origin, with the implication
that this could dictate a form of life in the present, although it has its
roots in political controversies in the sixteenth, seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, now takes the colour of mystical organicism, which
transcends, and is proof against, all forms of discursive reasoning. Natural
growth alone is real for Maistre. Only time, only history, can create authority
that men can worship and obey: mere military dictatorship, a work of individual
human hands, is brutal force without spiritual power; he calls it bâtonocratie,
and predicts the end of Napoleon.
“In similar strain Bonald denounce
individualism whether as a social doctrine or an intellectual method of
analysing historical phenomena. The inventions of man, he declared, are
precarious aids compared to the divinely ordained institutions that penetrate
man’s very being – language, family, the worship of God. By whom were they
invented? Whenever a child is born there are father, mother, family, language,
God; this is the basis of all that is genuine and lasting, not the arrangements
of men drawn from the world of shopkeepers, with their contracts, or promises,
or utility, or material goods. Liberal individualism inspired by the insolent
self-confidence of mutinous intellectuals has led to the inhuman competition of
bourgeois society, in which the strongest and the fastest win and the weak go
to the wall. Only the Church can organise a society in which the ablest are
held back so that the whole of society can progress and the weakest and least
greedy also reach the goal.
“These gloomy doctrines became the
inspiration of monarchist politics in France, and together with the notion of
romantic heroism and the sharp contrast between creative and uncreative,
historic and unhistoric, individuals and nations, duly inspired nationalism,
imperialism, and finally, in their most violent and pathological form, Fascist
and totalitarian doctrines in the twentieth century.” [452]
And yet Berlin is wrong to attribute both
Fascism and totalitarianism to the monarchical, authoritarian backlash against
the French Revolution. Fascism, it is true, was based on worship of the people,
its historical tradition and its State. As for the Russian and other communist
revolutions, however, they were in every way the descendants of the
universalist and internationalist French Revolution, whose failure they failed
to study properly and which they were therefore condemned to repeat on a still
vaster and bloodier scale.
But de Maistre was also wrong in thinking
that the Catholic idea, the idea that the evil passions can be tamed by blind
obedience to an unquestioned, absolute authority, could stop the revolution.
The Catholic idea was now dead – Napoleon killed it when he took the crown from
the Pope and crowned himself. Only the Orthodox idea, the idea brought to Paris
by the Russian Tsar, remained.
2. THE EAST: THE MAN-GOD DEFEATED
Fear
God, honour the king.
I
Peter 2.17.
The
not-born-in-the-purple emperor, who wanted to be a not-yet-anointed prophet,
did not foresee that, besides physical and political forces, states are
inspired and act through higher moral forces, that violence elicits against
itself those same forces which are in submission to it, that cunning can be
outwitted or destroyed by desperation, and that right by its firmness and
foresight is always more powerful than craftiness and spite.
Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow (1813).[453]
In
the reign of Alexander I Masonry tried finally to substitute for Orthodoxy a
certain ‘true Church’, or ‘inner Christianity’, in the system of State power,
leaving the former religion only for governing ‘the plebs’.”
Valery
Baidin.[454]
Napoleon never conquered two of his
enemies: Britain and Russia; and it is tempting to see in these nations two
principles that the revolution failed to subordinate to itself in the way that
it had (at least temporarily) subordinated Catholicism to itself. These were,
first: the love of freedom - not the ecstatic, collectivist, Rousseauist
“freedom to” that the revolution represented, but the more sober,
individualist, Lockean “freedom from” that was ingrained especially in
the stubborn spirit of the island race. In the course of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries the revolution made considerable inroads into English life,
but never destroyed its restraining, individualistic, anti-despotic influence
completely. The second, and far greater, principle was the love of God in
Orthodoxy, which inspired Russia to drive the Grande Armée all
the way from burning Moscow to the streets of Paris. Throughout the nineteenth
century Russia remained the main bulwark of civilisation against the
revolution, but finally succumbed to it in the catastrophe of 1917.
Tsar
Paul I of Russia
Beginning with Tsar Paul I, the son of
Emperor Peter III and Empress Catherine II, Russia began, slowly and
hesitantly, to recover from the abyss of westernism and despotism initiated by
Peter the Great.
St. John Maximovich writes: “The Tsarevich
Paul Petrovich, who spent his childhood at the court of Empress Elizabeth
Petrovna, - his mother could not exercise an immediate influence on him, - was
very different in his character and convictions from the Empress Catherine.
There Catherine II preferred to remove her son from the inheritance and make
her eldest grandson, Alexander Pavlovich, her heir… At the end of 1796
Catherine II finally decided to appoint Alexander as her heir, passing Paul by,
but she suddenly and unexpectedly died. The heir, Tsarevich Paul Petrovich,
ascended the throne…”[455]
Tsar Paul witnessed to the terrible
condition the eighteenth-century tsars had brought Russia: “On ascending the
throne of All-Russia, and entering in accordance with duty into various parts
of the state administration, at the very beginning of the inspection we saw
that the state economy, in spite of the changes in income made at various
times, had been subjected to extreme discomforts from the continuation over
many years of unceasing warfar and other circumstances. Expenses exceeded
income. The deficit was increasing from year to year, multiplying the internal
and external debts; in order to make up a part of this deficit, large sums were
borrowed, which brought great harm and disorder with them…”[456]
“The coronation of the Emperor Paul took
place in Moscow on April 5, 1797, on the first day of Holy Pascha. It was
distinguished by the fact that during the rite Paul, before putting on the
purple, ordered that he be vested in the dalmatic – one of the royal vestments
of the Byzantine emperors – which is similar to the hierarchical sakkos. The
anointing of the Emperor Paul was carried out by Metropolitan Gabriel, as the
senior member of the Holy Synod.
“After being crowned to the kingdom, the
Emperor read in the Dormition cathedral, from the height of the throne, the Law
of Succession that he had put together. After proclaiming the law, the
Sovereign sent through the royal doors into the altar, and laid it in a silver
casket which stood on the holy table to be kept there for ever. The holy
hierarch John of Shanghai writes concerning the Law of Succession of 1797:
‘Paul succeeded in publishing a law constituting a system based on the
principles introduced into life by the Muscovite gatherers of Rus’ and rooted
in the Russian soul…’ The holy hierarch continues: ‘Paul I himself, without
placing limitations on his autocratic power, on the day of the Sacred
Coronation, laid the act composed by him on the holy table of the Dormition
cathedral, whereby he promised before God that he would not change that order
which he recognised to be just and necessary…’ The successors of Paul Petrovich
introduced certain changes and additions to the Law, but, as Vladyka John
(Maximovich) witnesses, ‘the Law of Succession remained and has remained to the
present day basically that same law which the Emperor Paul I confirmed and
proclaimed on the day of his Sacred Coronation.’
“Strictly keeping the commandments of God,
his Majesty Paul I was concerned in all manner of ways for the welfare of his
subjects. Already on the day of his coronation Paul published a manifesto on
estate peasants, making a beginning to the limitation of landowners’ rights over
their serfs. The manifesto declared: ‘The Law of God given to us in the ten
commandments teaches us to devote the seventh day to God; which is why on this
day, which is glorified by the triumph of the Faith, and on which we have been
counted worthy to receive the sacred anointing and royal crowning on our
Forefathers’ Throne, we consider it our duty before the Creator and Giver of
all good things to confirm the exact and constant fulfilment of this law
throughout our Empire, commanding each and every one to observe it, so that no
one should have any excuse to dare to force his peasants to work on Sundays….’
“We know of a case when the Tsar came to
the defence of some peasants whose landowner was about to sell them severally,
without their families and land, so as to make use of the peasants’ property.
The peasants refused to obey, and the landowner informed the governor of the
rebellion. But the governor did not fail to carry out his duty and quickly
worked out what was happening. On receiving news about what was happening, Tsar
Paul declared the deal invalid, ordered that the peasants be left in their
places, and that the landowner be severely censured in his name. The
landowner’s conscience began to speak to him: he gathered the village commune and
asked the peasants for forgiveness. Later he set off for St. Petersburg and
asked for an audience with his Majesty. ‘Well, what did you sort out with your
peasants, my lord? What did they say?’ inquired the Emperor of the guilty man.
‘They said to me, your Majesty: God will forgive…’ ‘Well, since God and
they have forgiven you, I also forgive you. But remember from now on that they
are not your slaves, but my subjects just as you are. You have just been
entrusted with looking after them, and you are responsible for them before me,
as I am for Russia before God…’ concluded the Sovereign. After this incident a
special decree was issued forbidding the sale of serfs severally from one and
the same family. Thus in the reign of Paul Petrovich the number of days of corvée
was shortened to three in the week.
“The Emperor Paul’s love for justice and
care for the simple people was expressed also in the accessibility with which
he made his subjects happy, establishing the famous box in the Winter palace
whose key was possessed by him personally and into which the first courtier and
the last member of the simple people could cast their letters with petitions
for the Tsar’s immediate defence or mercy. The Tsar himself emptied the box
every day and read the petitions, leaving not a single one of them unanswered.
“There was probably no sphere in the State
which did not feel the influence of the industrious Monarch. Thus he ordered
the minting of silver rubles to struggle against he deflation in the value of
money. The Sovereign himself sacrificed a part of the court’s silver on this
important work. He said that he himself would eat on tin ‘until the ruble
recovers its rate’. And the regulation on medical institutions worked out by
the Emperor Paul could be used in Russia even in our day.
“The Emperor paid special attention to the
soldiers. They were given a new, warmer uniform for winter, better food and
help with money.
“The Emperor Paul I took great care of the
Orthodox clergy. He strove that the priesthood should have ‘an image and
condition more in accord with the importance of its rank’. As a consequence
measures were taken in his reign to improve the everyday existence of the white
clergy: the salaries of those on state pay were increased, and where no pay was
ordained, the parishioners were required to work church land, which was later
replaced by offerings in money or in kind, in bread. To encourage the clergy to
carry out their duties with greater zeal, distinguished service badges were
introduced. Clergy received awards, and, at the personal initiative of the
Sovereign, crosses worn on the breast were again introduced as awards. Until
the revolution the letter ‘P’, the initial of the Emperor Paul Petrovich, was
engraved on the back of synodal crosses. The Sovereign was also zealous for the
education of the clergy. In his reign several seminaries and theological
academies were founded in Petersburg and Kazan…[457]
“One of the Tsar’s contemporaries, N.A.
Sablukov, who had the good fortune, thanks to his service at the Royal Court,
to know the Emperor personally, remembered the Emperor Paul in his memoirs as
‘a deeply religious man, filled with a true piety and the fear of God…. He was
a magnanimous man, ready to forgive offences and recognise his mistakes. He
highly prized righteousness, hated lies and deceit, cared for justice and was
merciless in his persecution of all kinds of abuses, in particular usury and
bribery.’
“The well-known researcher of Paul,
Shabelsky-Bork, writes: ‘While he was Tsarevich and Heir, Paul would often
spend the whole night in prayer. A little carpet is preserved in Gatchina; on
it he used to pray, and it is worn through by his knees.’ The above-mentioned
N.A. Sablukov recounts, in agreement with this: ‘Right to the present day they
show the places on which Paul was accustomed to kneel, immersed in prayer and
often drenched in tears. The parquet is worn through in these places. The room
of the officer sentry in which I used to sit during my service in Gatchina was next
to Paul’s private study, and I often heard the Emperor’s sighs when he was
standing at prayer.’
“The historical records of those years
have preserved a description of the following event: ‘A watchman had a strange
and wonderful vision when he was standing outside the summer palace… The
Archangel Michael stood before the watchman suddenly, in the light of heavenly
glory, and the watchman was stupefied and in trembling from this vision… And
the Archangel ordered that a cathedral should be raised in his honour there and
that this command should be passed on to the Emperor Paul immediately. The
special event went up the chain of command, of course, and Paul Petrovich was
told about everything. But Paul Petrovich replied: ‘I already know’: he had
seen everything beforehand, and the appearance to the watchman was a kind of
repetition…’ From this story we can draw the conclusion that Tsar Paul was
counted worthy also of revelations from the heavenly world…
“The Maltese Order, for the purpose of
self-preservation[458],
placed itself under the protection of the Emperor Paul. On October 12, 1799 the
holy things of the Order were triumphantly brought to Gatchina: the right
hand of St. John the Baptist, a particle of the Cross of the Lord and the icon
of the Filerma Odigitria icon of the Mother of God. Only a spiritually
blind man, on learning this fact, would not see the Providence of God in the
fact that the Tsar became Master of the Maltese Order. October 12 was
introduced into the number of festal days by the Church, and a special service
to this feast was composed…
“The French revolution, which gave liberty
to atheism and all kinds of immorality, infected the minds of many people of
higher society in Russia. His Majesty Paul Petrovich was deeply conscious of
the danger of revolutionary ideas for the children of the Orthodox Church and
mercilessly destroyed the shoots of freethinking. Well-known Masons were
required to sign that they would not open lodges, which greatly harmed the
success of Masonry in Russia.”[459]
The reaction against Masonry had begun
already in the last part of the reign of Catherine the Great, who backed away
from her Enlightenment ideas when she saw the effect they produced in the
French revolution. “’Yesterday I remembered,” she wrote to Grimm in 1794, “that
you told me more than once: this century is the century of preparations. I will
add that these preparations consisted in preparing dirt and dirty people of
various kinds, who produce, have produced and will produce endless misfortunes
and an infinite number of unfortunate people.’
“The next year she categorically declared
that the Encyclopédie had only two aims: the one – to annihilate
the Christian religion, and the other – royal power. ‘I will calmly wait for
the right moment when you will see how right is my opinion concerning the
philosophers and their hangers-on that they participated in the revolution…,
for Helvétius and D’Alambert both admitted to the deceased Prussian king
that this book had only two aims: the first – to annihilate the Christian
religion, and the second – to annihilate royal power. They spoke about this
already in 1777.”[460]
In this estimate of Masonry and French
influence, if in little else, Tsar Paul was in agreement with his mother. So he
sent the great General Suvorov to Vienna to join Austria and Britain in
fighting the French. However, when the British seized the island of Malta,
Paul, as Grand Master of the Maltese Order, broke with Britain and Austria and
came closer to the French, whose first consul at this time was Napoleon. The
alliance of Russia and France, and especially the Tsar’s decision on January
12, 1801 to send the Don Cossacks to attack the English in India, spurred the
latter into action. The English ambassador in Russia, Sir Charles Whitford,
bribed several malcontents at the court, mainly Masons, to assassinate their
sovereign. The Cossacks had crossed the Volga on March 18 when they heard of
the death of the Tsar…
“As it became evident that Emperor Paul’s
reign posed a serious threat to the continued activity of ‘Catherine’s Eagles’,
those of the nobility who were dedicated to her westernizing aims and who
occupied high government posts... began to seriously consider plots to remove
him. When Paul tried to conclude a treaty with the powerful Napoleon in order
to protect Russia, they decided to act. These traitors to their own country had
strong financial ties to England, and as the sister of three of Paul’s
murderers openly stated, the interests of England were closer to them than
those of Russia.” [461]
“Tsar Paul was distinguished by a
chivalrous character and a truly Christian soul. He dreamed of bringing peace
to Europe and re-establishing the altars and thrones overturned by the
revolution. The dark forces feared the influence of God’s Anointed one on the
destinies of the peoples. A conspiracy was formed, at the head of which stood
certain dignitaries and embittered officers who dreamed of freedom. The
Emperor’s decrees began to distorted to an unrecognisable degree. The plotters
employed every stratagem to incline society in the capital against the
Autocrat. By March, 1801 the demonic hardening of heart of the plotters had
reached its peak, and they decided to kill the Tsar. His Majesty Paul Petrovich
was bestially killed on the night from March 11 to 12 (old style), 1801.
“The prophecy of the clairvoyant monk Abel
was completely fulfilled. He personally foretold to the Emperor Paul: ‘Your
reign will be short, and I, the sinner, see your savage end. On the feast of
St. Sophronius of Jerusalem you will receive a martyric death from unfaithful
servants. You will be suffocated in your bedchamber by evildoers whom you warm
on your royal breast… They will bury you on Holy Saturday… But they, these
evildoers, in trying to justify their great sin of regicide, will proclaim that
you are mad, and will blacken your good memory.’
“The regicides’ deaths were terrible.
Before their deaths practically all of them suffered spiritual and bodily
torments. One of them died after gorging himself on oysters; three of the chief
plotters who spread the rumours of the Tsar’s madness themselves went out of
their minds. The chief murderer, Palen, in his madness ate his own excreta.
Thus were these followers of the Antichrist punished by the Lord for having
dared to shed the blood of the Anointed of God.
“In concluding his prophecy, St. Abel
said: ‘… But the Russian people with their sensitive soul will understand and
esteem you, and they will bring their sorrows to your grave, asking for your
intercession and the softening of the hears of the unrighteous and cruel.’ This
part of the prophecy of Abel was also fulfilled. The holy hierarch John of
Shanghai writes: ‘When Paul I was killed, the people did not know about it, but
on learning it, for many long years they brought their sympathy and prayers to
his grave.’”[462]
The significance of the reign of Tsar Paul
I consisted in the fact that it represented the beginning both of a return
towards “symphony” in Church-State relations, and of a determined campaign
against the Masons, the main enemies of Russia and Orthodoxy. Not too much
should be of the fact that he was sympathetic towards Catholicism, which, as
Nikolin points out, “was to a large extent linked with fear of the French
revolution, which had dealt cruelly with believing Catholics, monks and clergy.
This relationship is attested by such facts as his offering the Pope of Rome to
settle in Russia, his cooperation with the establishment of the Jesuit order in
Russia, and his support for the establishment of a Roman Catholic chapel in St.
Petersburg. At the same time attention should be drawn to Paul I’s ukaz of
March 18, 1797, which protected the consciences of peasants whom landowners
were trying to detach forcibly from Orthodoxy into the unia or convert to
Catholicism.”[463]
The
Annexation of Georgia and the Edinoverie
The year 1800 saw two important events
that strengthened, respectively, the security of the Orthodox world against the
external foe, and its internal unity: the annexation of Georgia and the reunion
of some of the Old Believers with the Orthodox Church on a “One Faith” (Edinoverie)
basis.
Since the Georgians made their first
appeal for Russian protection in 1587, they had suffered almost continual invasions
from the Persians and the Turks, leading to many martyrdoms, of which the most
famous was that of Queen Ketevan in 1624. One king, Rostom, even adopted Islam
and persecuted Orthodoxy. In fact, from 1634 until the ascent of the throne by
King Wakhtang in 1701, all the sovereigns of Georgia were Muslim. The
eighteenth century saw some only a small improvement, and in 1762 King Teimuraz
II travelled to Russian for help. In 1783 protection was formally offered to
King Heraclius II of Kartli-Kakhetia, and the Catholicos of Georgia became a
member of the Russian Holy Synod while retaining his title.
“The last most heavy trial for the Church
of Iberia,” writes P. Ioseliani, was the irruption of Mahomed-Khan into the
weakened state of Georgia, in the year 1795. In the month of September of that
year the Persian army took the city of Tiflis, seized almost all the valuable
property of the royal house, and reduced the palace and the whole of the city
into a heap of ashes and of ruins. The whole of Georgia, thus left at the mercy
of the ruthless enemies of the name of Christ, witnessed the profanation of
everything holy, and the most abominable deeds and practices carried on in the
temples of God. Neither youth nor old age could bring those cruel persecutors
to pity; the churches were filled with troops of murderers and children were
killed at their mothers’ breasts. They took the Archbishop of Tiflis,
Dositheus, who had not come out of the Synod of Sion, made him kneel down
before an image of [the most holy Mother of God], and, without mercy on his old
age, threw him from a balcony into the river Kur; then they plundered his
house, and set fire to it. The pastors of the Church, unable to hide the
treasures and other valuable property of the Church, fell a sacrifice to the
ferocity of their foes. Many images of saints renowned in those days perished
for ever; as, for instance, among others, the image of [the most holy Mother of
God] of the Church of Metekh, and that of the Synod of Sion. The enemy, having
rifled churches, destroyed images, and profaned the tombs of saints, revelled
in the blood of Christians; and the inhuman Mahomed-Khan put an end to these
horrors only when there remained not a living soul in Tiflis.
“King George XIII, who ascended the throne
of Georgia (A.D. 1797-1800) only to see his subjects overwhelmed and rendered
powerless by their incessant and hopeless struggles with unavoidable dangers
from enemies of the faith and of the people, found the resources of the kingdom
exhausted by the constant armaments necessary for its own protection; before
his eyes lay the ruins of the city, villages plundered and laid waste,
churches, monasteries, and hermitages demolished, troubles within the family,
and without it the sword, fire, and inevitable ruin, not only of the Church,
but also of the people, yea, even of the very name of the people. In the fear
of God, and trusting to His providence, he made over Orthodox Georgia in a
decided manner to the Tzar of Russia, his co-religionist; and thus obtained for
her peace and quiet. It pleased God, through this king, to heal the deep wounds
of an Orthodox kingdom.
“Feeling that his end was drawing near,
he, with the consent of all ranks and of the people, requested the Emperor Paul
I to take Georgian into his subjection for ever (A.D. 1800). The Emperor
Alexander I, when he mounted the throne, promised to protect the Georgian
people of the same faith with himself, which had thus given itself over
unreservedly and frankly to the protection of Russia. In his manifesto to the
people of Georgia (A.D. 1801) he proclaimed the following:- ‘One and the same
dignity, one and the same honour, and humanity laid upon us the sacred duty,
after hearing the prayers of sufferers, to grant them justice and equity in
exchange for their affliction, security for their persons and for their
property, and to give to all alike the protection of the law.’”[464]
The annexation of Georgia marked an
important step forward in Russia’s progress to becoming the Third Rome. In the
eighteenth century the gathering of the Russian lands had been completed, and
the more or less continuous wars with Turkey demonstrated Russia’s
determination to liberate the Orthodox of the Balkans and the Middle East.
Georgia was the first non-Russian Orthodox nation to enter the empire of the
Third Rome on a voluntary basis: it remained to be seen whether there would be
others…
At the same time, however, there was a
large community of believers within Russia, the Old Believers, that rejected the
right of the Russian Church and State to lead the Orthodox world. And yet a
movement began among many Old Believer communities towards union with the
Orthodox Church on the basis of edinoverie, or “One Faith” – that is, agreement on dogmas and on the authority
of the Orthodox hierarchy, but with the former Old Believers allowed to retain
the pre-Niconian rites. But this was still a relatively informal movement, with
no general framework regulating the union of the Old Believers.
“Before 1800,” writes K.V. Glazkov,
“almost all the Old Believer communities had united with the Orthodox Church on
their own conditions. Besides, there were quite a few so-called crypto-Old
Believers, who formally belonged to the ruling Church, but who in their
everyday life prayed and lived according the Old Believer ways (there were
particularly many of these amidst the minor provincial nobility and merchant
class). This state of affairs was evidently not normal: it was necessary to
work out definite rules, common for all, for the union of the Old Believers
with the Orthodox Church. As a result of negotiations with the Muscovite Old
Believers the latter in 1799 put forward the conditions under which they would
agree to accept a priesthood from the Orthodox Church. These conditions, laid
out in 16 points, partly represented old rules figuring in the 1793 petition of
the Starodub ‘agreers’, and partly new ones relating to the mutual relations of
the ‘one-faithers’ with the Orthodox Church. These relations required the union
of the ‘one-faithers’ with the Orthodox Church, but allowed for their being to
a certain degree isolated. On their basis the Muscovite Old Believers submitted
a petition to his Majesty for their reunion with the Orthodox Church, and
Emperor Paul I wrote at the bottom of this document: ‘Let this be. October 27,
1800.’ This petition with the royal signature was returned to the Muscovite Old
Believers and was accepted as complete confirmation of their suggested
conditions for union, as an eternal act of the recognition of the equal
validity and honour of Old Believerism and Orthodoxy.
“But on the same day, with the remarks (or
so-called ‘opinions’) of Metropolitan Plato of Moscow, conditions were
confirmed that greatly limited the petition of the Old Believers. These
additions recognised reunited Old Believerism as being only a transitional
stage on the road to Orthodoxy, and separated the ‘old-faith’ parishes as it
were into a special semi-independent ecclesiastical community. Wishing to aid a
change in the views of those entering into communion with the Church on the
rites and books that they had acquired in Old Believerism, and to show that the
Old Believers were falsely accusing the Church of heresies, Metropolitan Plato
called the ‘agreers’ ‘one-faithers’…
“The one-faithers petitioned the Holy
Synod to remove the curses [of the Moscow Council of 1666-1667] on holy
antiquity, but Metropolitan Plato replied in his additional remarks that they
were imposed with justice. The Old Believers petitioned for union with the
Church while keeping the old rites, but Metropolitan Plato left them their
rites only for a time, only ‘in the hope’ that with time the reunited would
abandon the old rites and accept the new…
“Amidst the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox
Church the view became more and more established that the ‘One Faith’ was a
transitional step towards Orthodoxy. But in fact the One Faith implies unity
in dogmatic teaching and the grace of the Holy Spirit with the use in the
Divine services of various Orthodox rites. But the old rite continued to be
perceived as incorrect, damaged and in no way blessed by the Church, but only
‘by condescension not forbidden’ for a time.”[465]
Russia,
the Poles and the Jews
The greatest thorns in the flesh of the
Russian Empire in the nineteenth century were the Poles and the Jews. The two
nations had much in common: both nations without states, distrustful of each
other but united in their craving for national autonomy, they occupied
approximately the same territories in what was now Western Russia, the subjects
of that people, the Russians, whom they had exploited centuries before. The
future of Europe, and Christian civilization in general, would to a large
extent depend on how well Orthodox Russia would succeed in assimilating and
neutralising this breeding-ground of the Revolution…
As was to be expected, the Poles welcomed
Napoleon after he defeated the Prussians at Jena in 1806, even if his claims to
be a liberator were well and truly tarnished by then – Polish soldiers had
suffered particularly in helping the French tyrant’s attempts to crush
Dominican independence. But Napoleon was the means, they felt, to their own
independence; and so, as Madame de Staël said, “the Poles are the only
Europeans who can serve under the banners of Napoleon without blushing.”[466]
They were doomed to be disappointed,
however. In 1807 Napoleon created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and by 1812
controlled almost all the lands of the former Republic – but did not restore it
to full independence. And then the Russian armies came back again…
Nevertheless, Napoleon’s Polish Marshal
Poniatowski did not desert him after the defeat in Russia, and Polish soldiers
accompanied him both to Elba and to St. Helena. The cult of Napoleon remained
alive in Polish hearts for a long time, and the famous poet Mickiewicz signed
himself “Adam Napoleon Mickiewicz”.[467]
In fact, Tsar Alexander offered the Poles
much more than Napoleon had ever given them – the Congress Kingdom with one of
the most liberal constitutions in Europe. Moreover, he offered the hope of
adding the other Polish lands to the Kingdom. But Polish delegates to the Sejm
demanded too much, and soon Alexander, disillusioned, began to curtail the
freedoms he had offered…
If
the Polish problem was difficult to solve, the Jewish problem was even more
intractable. Now for a century or so before the French revolution, all the
major countries of Europe, with the partial exception of Britain and her
colonies, had been absolutist in their political structure. In each the monarch
supported an official religion which was in decline but still powerful, and in
each there were large religious minorities that were sometimes tolerated and
sometimes persecuted – the Huguenots in France, the Orthodox in Austro-Hungary,
the Orthodox and Armenians in Turkey, the Old Believers and Catholics in
Russia, the Orthodox and Protestants in Poland, the Jews everywhere…
The universal principles proclaimed by the
Enlightenment, together with the idea of the holiness of the Nation proclaimed
by the French revolution, led, as we have seen, to the emancipation of the
Jews, first in France, and then in most of the countries of Europe. The process
was slow and accompanied by many reverses and difficulties, but inexorable. The
only great power which firmly and consistently resisted this trend was Russia….
Throughout the medieval and early modern
periods, with the exception of the period of the Judaizing heresy in the late
fifteenth century, the Jews had been forbidden from settling in Russia. The
Muscovite Tsars had reason to fear the influx of Jews from Poland-Lithuania.
There, as we have seen, the Polish landowners had given considerable privileges
to the Jews, employing them to collect very heavy taxes, fees, tolls and
produce from the Russian serfs.[468]
In some cases the Poles even handed over churches and monasteries to the Jews,
who would extort fees from the Orthodox for the celebration of sacraments.[469]
Infuriated by their Jewish and Polish
oppressors, the Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants rose up in rebellion from 1648
and appealed to the Tsar for help. The Tsarist armies triumphed, and by the
treaty of Andrusovo in 1667 the Eastern Ukraine and the Smolensk region were
ceded – together with their (fairly small) Jewish population – to Russia. 1667
was the very year in which Patriarch Nicon was unjustly deposed; so the first
major influx of Jews into Russia coincided with the first step seriously to
undermine Church-State relations in Russia. [470]
Hartley writes that these Jews “lived
mostly in the Ukraine although a small Jewish community became established in
Moscow. The government legislated to contain and control the Jewish population
within the empire’s borders. Both Catherine I (1725-27) and Elizabeth (1741-62)
attempted to ban Jews from Russia; one estimate is that 35,000 Jews were
banished in 1741.[471]
However, as a consequence of the three
partitions of Poland, Russia acquired a far larger Jewish population, estimated
by historians at anything between 155,000 and 900,000 persons, but probably
closer to the lower figure.[472]
The empire acquired a further c. 250,000 Jews after the establishment of
the Congress Kingdom of Poland in 1815. There was a substantial Jewish
population in Bessarabia (11.3 per cent in 1863). In 1854, the Jewish
population of the whole empire was estimated as 1,062,132.”[473]
Just as the first influx of Jews into
Russia in 1667 may be seen to have been recompense for the unjust deposition of
Patriarch Nicon, so the far larger influx in 1795 may be seen as due recompense
for nearly a century of absolutist rule that contradicted the principles of
Orthodox Christian statehood and allowed westernising and Masonic thinking to
flourish in Russia. Catherine did act to stop the penetration of Jews into
Great Russia. She created a “Pale of Settlement” restricting Jews to Western
and Southern Russia.
How were the Russian Tsars to govern their
new subjects? It was a difficult problem exacerbated by mutual hostility. “The
hostile attitude of the Jews to the Christians,” writes Platonov, “was the main
reason for the tense relations between Russians and Jews. The Russians looked
on the Jews first of all as enemies of the faith.”[474]
And as enemies of the State. For, as David Vital writes: “Having no earthly
masters to whom he thought he owed unquestioning political obedience (the
special case of the Hasidic rebbe or zaddik and his devotees
aside), ‘[the European Jew’s] was… a spirit that, for his times, was remarkably
free. Permitted no land, he had no territorial lord. Admitted to no guild, he
was free of the authority of established master-craftsmen. Not being a
Christian, he had neither bishop nor priest to direct him. And while he could
be charged or punished for insubordination to state or sovereign, he could not
properly be charged with disloyalty. Betrayal only entered into the life of the
Jews in regard to their own community or, more broadly, to Jewry as a whole. It
was to their own nation alone that they accepted that they owed undeviating
loyalty.”[475]
Emancipation as legislated for by the
French National Assembly in 1789-91 offered one possible solution; for it led,
hopefully, to assimilation and therefore the disappearance of “the Jewish
problem”. It was a path fiercely rejected, as we have seen, by most of the
Jewish leaders themselves in the West. However, even in the much less
acculturated East there were a few – very few – Jews who advocated it. “If
50,000 Jews,” wrote Shelomo Polonus of Vilna, “have convinced the French
nation, this refined and enlightened nation of Europe, that… they will help
their country with the wealth of their life, if these Jews have been granted
civic rights and have been put on an equal footing with any Frenchman, then there
are even fewer reasons to doubt whether nearly one million Jews in the Polish
state will through enlightenment become happy and useful to their country.”[476]
Catherine II – influenced, no doubt, by
the Toleranzpatent (1782) of her fellow “enlightened despot”, Joseph II
of Austria - appears to have shared this optimistic outlook. “In 1785 and again
in 1795 (on the occasion of the Third Partition),” writes Vital, “the principle
that Jewish town-dwellers and merchants were entitled to treatment on an equal
footing with all other town-dwellers and merchants was authoritatively
restated. Allowance was made for Jews of the appropriate class to serve as
electors to municipal office and to be elected themselves. But precisely what
social class or classes Jews should be permitted to belong to was (and would
remain) a vexed question. Clearly, they were not peasants (krestyaniny).
They were certainly not serfs (krepostnye). They were not of the gentry
(dvoryanstvo). They might be merchants (kuptsy), but membership of
the guilds of merchants, especially the higher guilds, was a costly affair and
few Jews were of the requisite wealth and standing to join them; and, in any
event, such membership entailed rights to which the ‘native’ or ‘indigenous’
people (korennoye naseleniye), namely the ethnic Russian (and of course
the Polish) merchants, objected. That left the class of town-dwellers (meshchantsvo);
but the fact was that the great majority of the Jews of Russia and Poland at
this time were not town-dwellers…”[477]
There were still deeper problems relating
to the Russian Jews, among them that of the kahal. We have seen how
important this internal Jewish authority was considered by the enlightened
Polish Jew Hourwitz. The Tsar’s servants were soon to make this discovery for
themselves. Tsar Paul I appointed the poet and state official Gavriil
Romanovish Derzhavin to make a special investigation of the Jewish question.
After visiting Belorussia twice, writes Platonov, Derzhavin “noted the ominous
role of the kahals – the organs of Jewish self-rule on the basis of the
bigoted laws of the Talmud, which ‘a well-constructed political body must not
tolerate’, as being a state within the state. Derzhavin discovered that the
Jews, who considered themselves oppressed, established in the Pale of
Settlement a secret Israelite kingdom divided into kahal districts with kahal
administrations endowed with despotic power over the Jews which inhumanly
exploited the Christians and their property on the basis of the Talmud. …[478]
“Derzhavin also uncovered the concept of
‘herem’ – a curse which the kahal issued against all those who did not
submit to the laws of the Talmud. This, according to the just evaluation of the
Russian poet, was ‘an impenetrable sacrilegious cover for the most terrible
crimes’.
“In his note Derzhavin ‘was the first to
delineate a harmonious, integral programme for the resolution of the Jewish
question in the spirit of Russian statehood, having in mind the unification of
all Russian subjects on common ground’.
“Paul I, after reading the note, agreed
with many of its positions and decorated the author. However, the tragic death
of the Tsar as the result of an international Masonic conspiracy destroyed the
possibility of resolving the Jewish question in a spirit favourable for the
Russian people. The new Emperor, Alexander I, being under the influence of a
Masonic environment, adopted a liberal position. In 1802 he created a special
Committee for the improvement of the Jews, whose soul was the Mason Speransky,
who was closely linked with the Jewish world through the well-known tax-farmer
Perets, whom he considered his friend and with whom he lived.
“Another member of the committee was G.R.
Derzhavin. As general-governor, he prepared a note ‘On the removal of the
deficit of bread in Belorussia, the collaring of the avaricious plans of the
Jews, on their transformation, and other things’. Derzhavin’s new note, in the
opinion of specialists, was ‘in the highest degree a remarkable document, not
only as the work of an honourable, penetrating statesman, but also as a
faithful exposition of all the essential sides of Jewish life, which hinder the
merging of this tribe with the rest of the population.’
“In the report of the official commission
on the Jewish question which worked in the 1870s in the Ministry of the
Interior, it was noted that at the beginning of the reign of Alexander I the
government ‘stood already on the ground of the detailed study of Jewry and the
preparation that had begun had already at that time exposed such sides of the
public institutions of this nationality which would hardly be tolerable in any
state structure. But however often reforms were undertaken in the higher
administrative spheres, every time some magical brake held up the completion of
the matter.’ This magical brake stopped Derzhavin’s proposed reform of Jewry,
which suggested the annihilation of the kahals in all the provinces
populated by Jews, the removal of all kahal collections and the
limitation of the influx of Jews to a certain percentage in relation to the
Christian population, while the remaining masses were to be given lands in
Astrakhan and New Russia provinces, assigning the poorest to re-settlement.
Finally, he proposed allowing the Jews who did not want to submit to these
restrictions freedom to go abroad. However, these measures were not confirmed
by the government.
“Derzhavin’s note and the formation of the
committee elicited great fear in the Jewish world. From the published kahal
documents of the Minsk Jewish society it becomes clear that the kahals
and the ‘leaders of the cities’ gathered in an extraordinary meeting three days
later and decided to sent a deputation to St. Petersburg with the aim of
petitioning Alexander I to make no innovations in Jewish everyday life. But
since this matter ‘required great resources’, a very significant sum was laid
upon the whole Jewish population as a tax, refusal from which brought with it
‘excommunication from the people’ (herem). From a private note given to Derzhavin
by one Belorussian landowner, it became known that the Jews imposed their herem
also on the general procurator, uniting with it a curse through all the kahals
‘as on a persecutor’. Besides, they collected ‘as gifts’ for this matter, the
huge sum for that time of a million rubles and sent it to Petersburg, asking
that ‘efforts be made to remove him, Derzhavin, from his post, and if that was
not possible, at any rate to make an attempt on his life’.”[479]
Not surprisingly, Tsar Alexander’s Statute
for the Jews of December 9, 1804 turned out to be fairly liberal – much more
liberal than the laws of Frederick Augustus in Napoleon’s Duchy of Warsaw. Its
strictest provisions related to a ban on Jews’ participation in the distilling
and retailing of spirits. Also, writes Vital, “there was to be no relaxation of
the ancient rule that Jews (negligible exceptions apart) were to be prevented
from penetrating into ‘inner Russia’. Provision was made for an eventual, but
determined, attack on the rabbinate’s ancient – but in the government’s view
presumptuous and unacceptable – practice of adjudicating cases that went beyond
the strict limits of the religious (as opposed to the civil and criminal
domain), but also on rabbinical independence and authority generally….[480]
“But the Jews themselves could take some
comfort in it being expressly stated that there was to be no question of
forcible conversion to Christianity; that they were not to be oppressed or
harassed in the observance of their faith and in their general social
activities; that the private property of the Jews remained inviolable; and that
Jews were not to be exploited or enserfed. They were, on the contrary, to enjoy
the same, presumably full protection of the law that was accorded other
subjects of the realm. They were not to be subject to the legal jurisdiction of
the landowners on whose estates they might happen to be resident. And they were
encouraged in every way the Committee could imagine – by fiscal and other
economic incentives, for example, by the grant of land and loans to develop it,
by permission to move to the New Russian Territories in the south – to undergo
decisive and (so it was presumed) irreversible change in the two central
respects which both Friezel and Derzhavin had indeed, and perfectly reasonably,
regarded as vital: education and employment. In this they were to be encouraged
very strongly; but they were not to be forced…”[481]
However, the liberal Statute of 1804 was
never fully implemented, and was succeeded by stricter measures towards the end
of Alexander’s reign and in the reign of his successor, Nicholas I. There were
many reasons for this. Among them, of course, was Napoleon’s invasion of Russia
in 1812, which, if it had been successful, would have united the Western Sephardic
Jews with the Eastern Ashkenazi Jews in a single State, free, emancipated, and
under their own legally convened Sanhedrin. It was precisely because Napoleon
had re-established the Jewish Sanhedrin that the Holy Synod of the Russian
Orthodox Church called Napoleon the antichrist and an enemy of God.[482]
But not only did Napoleon not succeed: the invasion of Russia was the graveyard
of his empire. In 1813, and again in 1815, the Russian armies entered Paris.
From now on, the chief target of the Jews’ hatred would be the Russian Empire…
However, the main reason for the
tightening of Russian policy was “the Jews’ abhorrence of Christianity, the
intensely negative light in which non-Jewish society had always been regarded,
and the deeply ingrained suspicion and fear in which all forms of non-Jewish
authority were commonly held.”[483]
As a result, in the whole of the 19th century only 69,400 Jews
converted to Orthodoxy.[484]
If the French delegates who emancipated the French Jews could ignore this fact
(in that they were themselves anti-Christian), the Russian Tsars could
not. For, as the prosemitic and
anti-Russian author, David Vital writes, “there were differences between
Russian and the other European states not only in the political relationship
between state and Church, but in respect of the place of religion generally… It
was not merely that in principle Russia continued to be held by its Autocrat
and his minions to be a Christian state with a particular duty to uphold its
own Orthodox Church. It was that, far from the matter of the state’s
specifically Christian duty slowly wasting away, as in the west, it continued
actively to exercise the minds of Russia’s rulers as one of the central
criteria by which questions of public policy were to be judged and decided. The
continuous search for an effective definition of the role, quality, and
ultimate purposes of the Autocracy itself was an enterprise which, considering
the energy and seriousness with which it was pursued, sufficed in itself to
distinguish Russia from its contemporaries. The programmes to which the state
was committed and all its structures were under obligation to promote varied
somewhat over time. But in no instance was there serious deviation from the
rule that Russian Orthodoxy was and needed to remain a central and
indispensable component of the ruling ethos. Nineteenth-century Russia was… an
ideological state in a manner and to a degree that had become so rare as to be
virtually unknown in Europe and would not be familiar again for at least a century…”[485]
But if there was a gradual tightening of
tsarist policy in relation to the Jews, it had little of no effect on the basic
problem of their religious antagonism towards, and social isolation from, the
Christian population. As Platonov writes: “The statute of the Jews worked out
in 1804, which took practically no account of Derzhavin’s suggestion, continued
to develop the isolation of the Jewish communities on Russian soil, that is, it
strengthened the kahals together with their fiscal, judicial, police and
educational independence. However, the thought of re-settling the Jews out of
the western region continued to occupy the government after the issuing of the
statute in 1804. A consequence of this was the building in the New Russian area
(from 1808) of Jewish colonies in which the government vainly hoped to
‘re-educate’ the Jews, and, having taught them to carry out productive
agricultural labour, to change in this way the whole structure of their life.
Nevertheless, even in these model colonies the kahal-rabbinic administration
retained its former significance and new settlements isolated themselves from
the Christian communities; they did not intend to merge with them either in a
national or in a cultural sense. The government not only did not resist the
isolation of the Jews, but even founded for them the so-called Israelite
Christians (that is, Talmudists who had converted to Orthodoxy). A special
committed existed from 1817 to 1833.”[486]
Monk Abel prophesied the following about
Paul’s son and successor, Tsar Alexander I: “Under him the French will burn
down Moscow, but he will take Paris from them and will be called the Blessed.
But his tsar’s crown will be heavy for him, and he will change the exploit of
service as tsar for the exploit of fasting and prayer, and he will be righteous
in God’s eyes.”[487]
The reign of Tsar Alexander can be divided
into three phases: a first phase up to 1812, when he was strongly influenced by
the ideas of the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment; a second phase from
1812 to about 1822, when the main influence on him was a kind of romantic
mysticism; and a third phase until his death, when he returned to True
Orthodoxy.
Tsar Alexander faced, in a particularly
acute form, the problems faced by all the “enlightened despots” of the
eighteenth century – that is, how to relieve the burdens of the majority of his
people without destroying the autocratic system that held the whole country
together. Like his fellow despots, Alexander was strongly influenced by the
ideals of the French revolution and by the masonic ferment that, as we have
seen, had penetrated the nobility of Russia no less than the élites of
Western Europe. So it is not surprising that he should have partially succumbed
to its influence, wavering between the strictly autocratic views of his father,
Tsar Paul I, and the court historian Nicholas Karamzin, on the one hand, and
the liberalism of the Minister of Finance Michael Speransky and the future
leaders of the Decembrist conspiracy, on the other.
His wavering is illustrated by his giving
Poland a liberal constitution, on the one hand, but refusing it – contrary to
his own intention in his youth[488]
– to Russia, on the other, dismissing Speransky who had proposed an elected
legislative assembly.
At the beginning of his reign, the young
Tsar was severely restricted by a Masonic coterie of courtiers, among whom
several had participated in the murder of his father. “On June 24, 1801,”
writes V.F. Ivanov, “a secret committee opened its proceedings. Alexander
called it, on the model of the revolution of 1789, ‘the Committee of public
safety’, and its opponents from the conservative camp – ‘the Jacobin gang’.
“There began criticism of the existing
order and of the whole government system, which was recognised to be ‘ugly’.
The firm and definite conclusion was reached that ‘only a constitution can
muzzle the despotic government’”.[489]
However, it was the despotic rather than
the republican strands in the French revolution that attracted the young Tsar
at this moment, and in particular the model of Napoleon, who had just come to
power in France. “From the beginning of the 19th century,” writes
L.A. Tikhomirov, “the Petrine institutions finally collapsed. Already the
practice of our 19th century has reduced ‘the collegiate principle’
to nothing. Under Alexander I the elegant French system of bureaucratic
centralisation created by Napoleon on the basis of the revolutionary ideas
captivated the Russian imitative spirit. For Russian this was ‘the last word’
in perfection, and Speransky, an admirer of Napoleon, together with the
Emperor, an admirer of the republic, created a new system of administration
which continued essentially until Emperor Alexander II.
“Alexander I’s institutions completed the
absolutist construction of the government machine. Until that time, the very
imperfection of the administrative institutions had not allowed them to escape
control. The supreme power retained its directing and controlling character.
Under Alexander I the bureaucracy was organised with every perfection. A strict
separation of powers was created. An independent court was created, and a
special organ of legislation – the State Council. Ministries were created as
the executive power, with an elegant mechanism of driving mechanisms operating
throughout the country. The bureaucratic mechanism’s ability to act was brought
to a peak by the strictest system of centralisation. But where in all these
institutions was the nation and the supreme power?
“The nation was subjected to the ruling
mechanism. The supreme power was placed, from an external point of view, at the
intersection of all the administrative powers. In fact, it was surrounded by
the highest administrative powers and was cut off by them not only from the
nation, but also from the rest of the administrative mechanism. With the
transformation of the Senate into the highest judicial organ, the supreme power
lost in it an organ of control.
“The idea of the administrative
institutions is that they should attain such perfection that the supreme power
will have no need to conduct any immediate administrative activity. As an ideal
this is correct. But in fact there is hidden here the source of a constant usurpation
of administrative powers in relation to the supreme power. The point is that
the most perfect administrative institutions act in an orderly fashion only
under the watchful control of the supreme power and his constant direction. But
where control and direction by the supreme power is undermined, the bureaucracy
becomes the more harmful the more perfectly it is constructed. With this it
acquires the tendency to become de facto free of the supreme power and
even submits it to itself…”[490]
Meanwhile, Masonry was developing apace in
Russia. In January, 1800 A.F. Labzin opened the “Dying Sphinx” lodge in
Petersburg. The members of the order were sworn to sacrifice themselves and all
they had to the aims of the lodge, whose existence remained a closely guarded
secret. In 1806 Labzin founded The Messenger of Zion as the vehicle of
his ideas. Suppressed at first by the Church hierarchy, it was allowed to
appear by Golitsyn in 1817.
“The Messenger of Zion,” writes
Walicki, “preached the notion of ‘inner Christianity’ and the need for a moral
awakening. It promised its readers that once they were morally reborn and
vitalized by faith, they would gain suprarational powers of cognition and be
able to penetrate the mysteries of nature, finding in them a key to a superior
revelation beyond the reach of the Church.
“Labzin’s religion was thus a
nondenominational and antiecclesiastical Christianity. Men’s hearts, he
maintained, had been imbued with belief in Christ on the first day of creation;
primitive pagan peoples were therefore closer to true Christianity than nations
that had been baptized but were blinded by the false values of civilization.
The official Church was only an assembly of lower-category Christians, and the
Bible a ‘silent mentor who gives symbolic indications to the living teacher
residing in the heart’. All dogmas, according to Labzin, were merely human
inventions: Jesus had not desired men to think alike, but only to act justly.
His words ‘Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden’ showed that he
did not mean to set up any intermediate hierarchy between the believers and
God.”[491]
In 1802 A.A. Zherebtsov opened the “United
Friends” lodge in Petersburg. Its aim was “to remove between men the
distinctions of races, classes, beliefs and views, and to destroy fanaticism
and superstition, and annihilate hatred and war, uniting the whole of humanity
through the bonds of love and knowledge.”[492]
Then there was the society of Count
Grabyanka, “The People of God”. “The aim of the society was ‘to announce at the
command of God the imminent Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and his glorious
reign upon earth’ and to prepare the humble and faithful souls for the
approaching Kingdom of God. ‘As in the Rosecrucian lodges,’ writes Sokolskaya,
‘in the lodge of Count Grabyanka people indulged, besides theosophy, in alchemy
and magic. But while asserting that the brothers of the “Golden Rose Cross” had
as their object of study ‘white, Divine magic’, the leaders of the Rosecrucians
accused the followers of Count Grabyanka of indulging in reading books of black
magic and consorting with evil spirits. In sorrow at the lack of firmness of
these brothers, who had become enmeshed in a new teaching, the leaders wrote:
‘Those who are known to us are wavering on their path and do not know what to
join. And – God have mercy on them! – they are falling into the hands of evil
magicians or Illuminati…’”[493]
Which brings us to the Illuminati lodge
“Polar Star”, led by I.A. Fessler, which included among its adepts no less a
person than M.M. Speransky himself, the Minister of Finance. “’Speransky,’
writes Professor Shiman, ‘was a Freemason who accepted the strange thought of
using the organization of the lodge for the reform of the Russian clergy, which
was dear to his heart. His plan consisted in founding a masonic lodge which
would have branche-lodges throughout the Russian State and would accept the
most capable clergy as brothers.
“’Speransky openly hated Orthodoxy. With
the help of Fessler he wanted to begin a war against the Orthodox Church. The
Austrian chargé d’affaires Saint-Julien, wrote in a report to his
government on the fall of Speransky that the higher clergy, shocked by the
protection he gave to Fessler, whom he had sent for from Germany, and who had
the rashness to express Deist, antichristian views, were strongly instrumental
in his fall (letter of April 1, 1812). However, our ‘liberators’ were in
raptures with Speransky’s activities….’
“The peace of Tilsit [in 1807, with
Napoleon] did not bring pacification. A year after Tilsit a meeting took place
at Erfurt between Napoleon and Alexander, to which Alexander brought Speransky.
At this last meeting Napoleon made a huge impression and convinced him of the
need of reforming Russia on the model of France.
“The historian Professor Shiman in his
work, Alexander I, writes:
“’And so he (Alexander) took with him to
Erfurt the most capable of his officials, the privy councillor Michael
Mikhailovich Speransky, and put him in direct contact with Napoleon, who did
not miss the opportunity to discuss with him in detailed conversations various
questions of administration. The result of these conversations was a whole
series of outstanding projects of reforsm, of which the most important was the
project of a constitution for Russia.’[494]
“Alexander returned to Petersburg
enchanted with Napoleon, while his State-Secretary Speransky was enchanted both
with Napoleon and with everything French.
“The plan for a transformation of the State
was created by Speransky with amazing speed, and in October, 1809 the whole
plan was on Alexander’s desk. This plan reflected the dominant ideas of the
time, which were close to what is usually called ‘the principles of 1789’.
“1) The source of power is the State, the
country.
“2) Only that phenomenon which expresses
the will of the people can be considered lawful.
“3) If the government ceases to carry out
the conditions on which it was summoned to power, its acts lose legality.
“4) So as to protect the country from
arbitrariness, and put a bound to absolute power, it is necessary that it and
its organs – the government institutions – should be led in their acts by basic
laws, unalterable decrees, which exactly define the desires and needs of the
people.
“5) As a conclusion from what has been
said: the basic laws must be the work and creation of the nation itself.
“Proceeding from the proposition expressed
by Montesquieu that ‘three powers move and rule the state: the legislative
power, the executive power and the judicial power’, Speransky constructed the
whole of his plan on the principle of the division of powers – the legislative,
the executive and the judicial. Another masonic truth was introduced, that the
executive power in the hands of the ministers must be subject to the
legislative, which was concentrated in the State Duma.
“The plot proceeded. At its head was
Speransky, who was supported by Napoleon.
“After 1809 stubborn rumours circulated in
society that Speransky and Count N.P. Rumyantsev were more attached to the
interests of France than of Russia.
“Karamzin [the historian] in his notes and
conversations tried to convince Alexander to stop the carrying out of
Speransky’s reforms, which were useless and would bring only harm to the
motherland.
“Joseph de Maistre saw in the person of
Speransky a most harmful revolutionary, who was undermining the foundations of
all state principles and was striving by all means to discredit the power of the
Tsar.
“For two years his Majesty refused to
believe these rumours and warnings. Towards the beginning of 1812 the enemies
of Speransky in the persons of Arakcheev, Shishkov, Armfeldt and Great Princess
Catherine Pavlovna convinced his Majesty of the correctness of the general
conviction of Speransky’s treachery.
“The following accusations were brought
against Speransky: the incitement of the masses of the people through taxes,
the destruction of the finances and unfavourable comments about the government.
“A whole plot to keep Napoleon informed
was also uncovered. Speransky had been entrusted with conducting a
correspondence with Nesselrod, in which the main French actors were indicated
under pseudonyms. But Speransky did not limit himself to giving this
information: on his own, without authorisation from above, he demanded that all
secret papers and reports from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should be handed
over to him. Several officials were found who without objections carried out his
desire….
“Then from many honourable people there
came warnings about the traitrous activities of Speransky.
“At the beginning of 1812 the Swedish
hereditary prince Bernadotte, who was in opposition to Napoleon, informed
Petersburg that ‘the sacred person of the Emperor is in danger’ and that
Napoleon was ready with the help of a beg bribed to establish his influence in
Russia again.
“A letter was intercepted in which
Speransky told a friend about the departure of his Majesty with the aim of
inspecting the fortifications that had been raised on the western border, and
he used the expression ‘our Boban’. ‘Our Boban’ was a humorous nickname
inspired by Voltaire’s story, ‘White Bull’.
“Speransky was completely justly accused
of belonging to the most harmful sect of Masonry, the Illuminati. Moreover, it
was pointed out that Speransky was not only a member of it, but was ‘the regent
of the Illuminati’.
“Speransky’s relations with the Martinists
and Illuminati were reported by Count Rastopchin, who in his ‘Note on the
Martinists’, presented in 1811 to Great Princess Catherine Pavlovna, said that
‘they (the Martinists) were all more or less devoted to Speransky, who, without
belonging in his heart to any sect, or perhaps any relition, was using their
services to direct affairs and keep them dependent on himself.’
“Finally, in the note of Colonel Polev,
found in Alexander I’s study after his death, the names of Speransky, Fessler,
Magnitsky, Zlobin and others were mentioned as being members of the Illuminati
lodge…
“On March 11, 1812 Sangley was summoned to
his Majesty, who informed him that Speransky ‘had the boldness to describe all
Napoleon’s military talents and advised him to convene the State Duma and ask
it to conduct the war while he absented himself’. ‘Who am I then? Nothing?’,
continued his Majesty. ‘From this I see that he is undermining the autocracy,
which I am obliged to transfer whole to my heirs.’
“On March 16 Professor Parrot of Derpt
university was summoned to the Winter Palace. ‘The Emperor,’ he wrote in a
later letter to Emperor Nicholas I, ‘angrily described to me the ingratitude of
Speransky, whom I had never seen, expressing himself with feeling that drew
tears from him. Having expounded the proof of his treachery that had been
presented to him, he said to me: ‘I have decided to shoot him tomorrow, and
have invited you here because I wish to know your opinion on this.’
“Unfortunately, his Majesty did not carry
out his decision: Speransky had too many friends and protectors. They saved
him, but for his betrayal he was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod, and then – in view
of the fact that the Nizhni Novgorod nobility were stirred up against him – to
Perm…. At a patriotic banquet in the house of the Provincial Governor Prince
Gruzinsky in Nizhni Novgorod, the nobles’ patriotism almost cost Speransky his
life. ‘Hang him, execute him, burn him Speransky on the pire’ suggested the
Nizhni Novgorod nobles.
“Through the efforts of his friends,
Speransky was returned from exile and continued his treachery against his kind
Tsar. He took part in the organisation of the uprising of the Decembrists, who
after the coup appointed him first candidate for the provisional government.”[495]
1812
However, it was Napoleon’s invasion,
rather than any internal debate, which swung the scales in favour of the status
quo as against any radical reform, thereby paradoxically saving Russia from a
1789-style revolution. It also probably saved Russia from a union with Catholicism,
which by now had made its Concordat with Napoleon and was acting, very
probably, on Napoleon’s orders. For in 1810 Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, as
K.A. Papmehl writes, “became the recipient of ecumenical overtures by the
French senator Grégoire (formerly Bishop of Blois), presumably on
Napoleon’s initiative. In a letter dated in Paris in May of that year,
Grégoire referred to the discussions held in 1717, at the Sorbonne,
between Peter I and some French bishops, with a view of exploring the prospects
of re-unification. Peter apparently passed the matter on to the synod of
Russian bishops who, in their turn, indicated that they could not commit
themselves on a matter of such importance without consulting the Eastern
Patriarchs. Nothing had been heard from the Russian side since then.
Grégoire nevertheless assumed that the consultation must have taken
place and asked for copies of the Patriarchs’ written opinions. He concluded
his letter by assuring Platon that he was hoping and praying for reunification of
the Churches…
“Platon passed the letter to the Synod in
St. Petersburg. In 1811 [it] replied to Grégoire, with Emperor
Alexander’s approval, to the effect that a search of Russian archives failed to
reveal any of the relevant documents. The idea of a union, Platon added, was,
in any case ‘contrary to the mood of the Russian people’ who were deeply
attached to their faith and concerned with its preservation in a pure and
unadulterated form.”[496]
Only a few years before, at Tilsit in
1807, the Tsar had said to Napoleon: “In Russia I am both Emperor and Pope –
it’s much more convenient.”[497]
But this was not true: if Napoleon was effectively both Emperor and Pope in
France, this could never be said of the tsars in Russia, damaged though the
Orthodox symphony of powers had been by a century of absolutism and
anti-Orthodox acculturation. And the restraint on Alexander’s power constituted
by what remained of that symphony of powers evidently led him to think again
about imitating the West too closely, whether politically or ecclesiastically.
And so Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in
1812 acquired a significance that the other Napoleonic wars in continental
Europe did not have: it became a struggle, not simply between two
not-so-different political systems, but between two radically opposed faiths:
the faith in the Revolution and the faith in Orthodoxy. 1812 produced an
explosion of Russian patriotism and religious feeling. More religious feeling
than patriotism, which was not immediately evident in some parts of the
population at the beginning of the invasion.
Thus K.N. Leontiev writes: “It was
ecclesiastical feeling and obedience to the authorities (the Byzantine
influence) that saved us in 1812. It is well-known that many of our peasants
(not all, of course, but those who were taken unawares by the invasion) found
little purely national feeling in themselves in the first minute. They robbed
the landowners’ estates, rebelled against the nobility, and took money from the
French. The clergy, the nobility and the merchants behaved differently. But
immediately they saw that the French were stealing the icons and putting horses
in our churches, the people became harder and everything took a different
turn…”[498]
God’s evident support for the heroic Russian
armies, at the head of which was the “Reigning” icon of the Mother of God[499],
reanimated a fervent pride and belief in Holy Russia. Of particular
significance was the fact that it had been Moscow, the old capital associated
with Orthodoxy and the Muscovite tsars, rather than the new and westernized
capital of St. Petersburg, that had borne the brunt of the suffering.
The nation was led by the Tsar and the
Church acting in symphony. Thus the Holy Synod declared that Napoleon was
threatening “to shake the Orthodox Greco-Russian Church, and is trying by a
diabolic invasion to draw the Orthodox into temptation and destruction”. It
said that during the revolution Napoleon had bowed down to idols, to human
creatures and whores. Finally, ‘to the greater disgrace of the Church of Christ
he has thought up the idea of restoring the sanhedrin, declaring himself the
Messiah, gathering together the Jews and leading them to the final uprooting of
all Christian faith”.[500]
However, the victory of the Orthodox was
almost prevented by the intrigues of the Masons. Prominent among them was the
commander-in-chief of the army Kutuzov, who, according to Sokolskaia, was
initiated into Masonry at the “Three Keys” lodge in Regensburg, and was later
received into lodges in Frankfurt, Berlin, Petersburg and Moscow, penetrating
into the secrets of the higher degrees.[501]
The Tsar was against Kutuzov’s appointment, but said: “The public wanted his
appointment, I appointed him: as regards myself personally, I wash my hands of
him.” He was soon proved right in his premonition. The Russian position at the
battle of Borodino was poorly prepared by Kutuzov, and he himself took no part
in it. The previous commander-in-chief, Barclay, took the lead and acted
heroically. Then he followed the agreed plan by retreating and evacuating
Moscow. But Kutuzov put all the blame for this on Barclay. De Maistre, writing
to his master, the King of Sardinia, was horrified: “There are few crimes to
compare with openly attributing all the horror and destruction of Moscow to
General Barclay, who is not Russia and has nobody to defend him.”[502]
In Moscow, the patriotic Count Rastopchin,
well aware of the pro-Napoleonic sentiments of the nobility, had them
evacuated, while Kutuzov slept. As the Martinist Runich said: “Rastopchin,
acting through fear, threw the nobility, the merchants and the non-gentry
intellectuals out of Moscow in order that they should not give in to the
enticements and influence of Napoleon’s tactics. He stirred up the hatred of
the people by the horrors [of the fire, which was lit on Rastopchin’s orders]
which he ascribed to the foreigners, whom he mocked at the same time. He saved
Russia from the yoke of Napoleon.”[503]
“The fire of Moscow started the people’s
war. Napoleon’s situation deteriorated from day to day. His army was
demoralised. The hungry French soldiers wandered round the outskirts of Moscow
searching for bread and provisions. Lootings and murders began. Discipline in
the army declined sharply. Napoleon was faced with a threatening dilemma:
either peace, or destruction.
“Peace negotiations began. On September 23
at Tarutino camp Kutuzov met Napoleon’s truce-envoy Loriston. Kutuzov willingly
accepted this suggestion and decided to keep the meeting a complete secret. He
told Loriston to meet him outside the camp, beyond the line of our advance
posts, on the road to Moscow. Everything was to be done in private and the
profect for a truce was to be put forward very quickly. This plan for a secret
agreement between Napoleon and the masonic commander-in-chief fell through.
Some Russian generals and especially the English agent attached to the Russian
army, [General] Wilson, protested against the unofficial secret negotiations
with Napoleon. On September 23 Wilson made a scene in front of Kutuzov; he came
to him as the representative of the general staff and army generals and
declared that the army would refuse to obey him. Wilson was supported by the
Duke of Wurtemburg, the Emperor’s uncle, his son-in-law the Duke of Oldenburg
and Prince Volkonsky, general-adjutant, who had arrived not long before with a
report from Petersburg. Kutuzov gave way, and the meeting with Loriston took
place in the camp headquarters.
“Kutuzov’s failure in securing peace did
not stop him from giving fraternal help to Napoleon in the future.
“After insistent urgings from those close
to him and at the insistence of his Majesty, Kutuzov agreed to attack near
Tarutino.
“The battle of Tarutino revealed the open
betrayal of the commander-in-chief.
“’When in the end the third and fourth
corps came out of the wood and the cavalry of the main army was drawn up for
the attack, the French began a general retreat. When the French retreat was
already an accomplished fact and the French columns were already beyond
Chernishina, Benigsen moved his armies forward.
“The main forces at the moment of the
French retreat had been drawn up for battle. In spite of this, and the
persuasions of Ermolov and Miloradovich, Kutuzov decisively refused to move the
armies forward, and only a part of the light cavalry was set aside for pursuing
the enemy, the rest of the army returned to the Tarutino camp.
“Benigsen was so enraged by the actions of
the field-marshal that after the battle he did not even consider it necessary
to display military etiquette in front of him and, on receiving his
congratulations on the victory, did not even get off his horse.
“In private conversations he accused
Kutuzov not only of not supporting him with the main army for personal reasons,
but also of deliberately holding back Osterman’s corps.
“For many this story will seem monstrous;
but from the Masonic point of view it was necessary: the Mason Kutuzov was only
carrying out his obligations in relation to his brother (Murat), who had been
beaten and fallen into misfortunte.
“In pursuing the retreating army of
Napoleon Kutuzov did not have enough strength or decisiveness to finish once
and for all with the disordered French army. During the retreat Kutuzov clearly
displayed criminal slowness.
“’The behaviour of the field-marshall
drives me mad,’ wrote the English agent General Wilson about this.”[504]
The truth was that “the Masonic oath was always held to be higher than the
military oath.”[505]
The
Aftermath of Victory
The victory over Napoleon elicited an
explosion of religious feeling among the people, whose “healthy patriotism,”
writes Rusak, “placed its mark also on the mood of the Tsar himself. He used to
say: ‘The burning of Moscow enlightened my soul, and God’s judgement on the icy
fields filled my heart with the warmth of faith, such as I have not felt before
now. Then I knew God, and how He is revealed in the Holy Scriptures.’”[506]
For those with eyes to see, God was
teaching the Russians a most important lesson: that those western, and
especially French, influences which had so inundated Russia in the century up
to 1812, were unequivocally evil and threatened to destroy all that was good in
Russia. As Bishop Theophan the Recluse wrote generations later: “We are
attracted by enlightened Europe… Yes, there for the first time the pagan
abominations that had been driven out of the world were restored; then they
passed and are passing to us, too. Inhaling into ourselves these poisonous fumes,
we whirl around like madmen, not remembering who we are. But let us recall
1812: Why did the French come to us? God sent them to exterminate that evil
which we had taken over from them. Russia repented at that time, and God had
mercy on her.”[507]
Tragically, however, that lesson was only
partially and superficially learned. Although the Masonic plans to overthrow
both Church and State had been foiled, both Masonry and other unhealthy
religious influences continued to flourish. And discontent with the existing
order was evident in both the upper and the lower classes.
Thus the question arose of the
emancipation of the peasants, who had played such a great part in the victory,
voluntarily destroying their own homes and crops in order to deny them to the
French. They hoped for more in return than they actually received, especially
those who had marched in the armies that marched to Paris, observing, as
Zamoyski notes, “that peasants in France and Germany lived in proper houses and
ate well, and that even Prussian soldiers were treated in more human fashion
than they were themselves”[508].
“There was great bitterness,” writes Hosking, “among peasants who returned from
their militia service to find that there was no emancipation. Alexander, in his
manifesto of 30 August 1814, thanking and rewarding all his subjects for their
heroic deeds, said of the peasants simply that they would ‘receive their reward
from God’…. Some nobles tried to persuade the authorities not to allow them
back, but to leave them in the regular army as ordinary soldiers. The poet
Gavriil Derzhavin was informed by his returnees that they had been ‘temporarily
released’ and were now state peasants and not obliged to serve him. Rumours
circulated that Alexander had intended to free them all, but had been invited
to a special meeting of indignant nobles at night in the Senate, from which he
had allegedly been rescued, pleading for his life, by his brother Grand Duke
Konstantin Pavlovich…”[509]
Here we have the theme, familiar
throughout later Russian history, of the people laying the blame for their
woes, not on the tsar, but on the nobles. Some peasants may have wanted
emancipation and a share in the nobles’ wealth. But they wanted it with
the Tsar and through the Tsar, not as the expression of some
egalitarian and anti-monarchist ideology. Tsarism and Orthodoxy were the great
strengths of Russia, which her enemies always underestimated. The French
revolution in this, its imperialist, expansionist phase, overthrew many
kingdoms and laid the seeds for the overthrow of still more; but it broke
against the rock of the Russian people’s faith in their God and their Tsar…
However, if the masses of the people were
still Orthodox and loyal to the Tsar, this was becoming more and more difficult
to say of the nobility. We have seen the extent to which Masonry penetrated the
bureaucracy in the early part of Alexander’s reign. Unfortunately, the
triumphant progress of the Russian army into the heart of Masonry, Paris, did
not destroy this influence, but only served to strengthen it. For, as Zamoyski
writes, “if nobles at home wanted to keep their serfs, the nobles who served as
officers in the armies that occupied Paris were exposed to other, liberal
influences. They had been brought up
speaking French and reading the same literature as educated people in other
countries. They could converse effortlessly with German and English allies as
well as with French prisoners and civilians. Ostensibly, they were just like
any of the Frenchmen, Britons and Germans they met, yet at every step they were
made aware of profound differences. The experience left them with a sense of
being somehow outside, almost unfit for participation in European civilisation.
And that feeling would have dire consequences…”[510]
Not only Masonry and liberalism, but all
kinds of pseudo-religious mysticism flooded into Russia from the West. There
was, writes N. Elagin, “a veritable inundation of ‘mystical’ and
pseudo-Christian ideas… together with the ‘enlightened’ philosophy that had
produced the French Revolution. Masonic lodges and other secret societies
abounded; books containing the Gnostic and millenarian fantasies of Jacob
Boehme, Jung-Stilling, Eckhartshausen and other Western ‘mystics’ were freely
translated into Russian and printed for distribution in all the major cities of
the realm; ‘ecumenical’ salons spread a vague teaching of an ‘inner
Christianity’ to the highest levels of Russian society; the press censorship
was under the direction of the powerful Minister of Spiritual Affairs, Count
Golitsyn, who patronized every ‘mystical’ current and stifled the voice of
traditional Orthodoxy by his dominance of the Holy Synod as Procurator; the
Tsar Alexander himself, fresh from his victory over Napoleon and the formation
of a vaguely religious ‘Holy Alliance’ of Western powers, favored the new
religious currents and consulted with ‘prophetesses’ and other religious
enthusiasts; and the bishops and other clergy who saw what was going on were
reduced to helpless silence in the face of the prevailing current of the times
and the Government’s support of it, which promised exile and disgrace for
anyone who opposed it. Many even of those who regarded themselves as sincere
Orthodox Christians were swept up in the spiritual ‘enthusiasm’ of the times,
and, trusting their religious feelings more than the Church’s authority and
tradition, were developing a new spirituality, foreign to Orthodoxy, in the
midst of the Church itself. Thus, one lady of high birth, Ekaterina P.
Tatarinova, claimed to have received the gift of ‘prophecy’ on the very day she
was received into the Orthodox Church (from Protestantism), and subsequently
she occupied the position of a ‘charismatic’ leader of religious meetings which
included the singing of Masonic and sectarian hymns (while holding hands in a
circle), a peculiar kind of dancing and spinning when the ‘Holy Spirit’ would
come upon them, and actual ‘prophecy’ – sometimes for hours at a time. The
members of such groups fancied that they drew closer to the traditions of
Orthodoxy by such meetings, which they regarded as a kind of restoration of the
New Testament Church for ‘inward’ believers, the ‘Brotherhood in Christ’, as
opposed to the ‘outward’ Christians who were satisfied with the Divine services
of the Orthodox Church… The revival of the perennial ‘charismatic’ temptation
in the Church, together with a vague ‘revolutionary’ spirit imported from the
West, presented a danger not merely to the preservation of true Christianity in
Russia, but to the very survival of the whole order of Church and State…”[511]
V.N. Zhmakin writes: “From 1812 there
began with us in Russia a time of the domination of extreme mysticism and
pietism… The Emperor Alexander became a devotee of many people simultaneously,
from whatever quarter they declared their religious enthusiasm… He protected
the preachers of western mysticism, the Catholic paters… Among the first of his
friends and counsellors was Prince A.N. Golitsyn, who was ober-procurator of
the Synod from 1803… He had the right to affirm the Synodal decisions… Prince
Golitsyn was the complete master of the Russian Orthodox Church in the reign of
Alexander I… Having received no serious religious education, like the majority
of aristocrats of that time, he was a complete babe in religious matters and
almost an ignoramus in Orthodoxy… Golitsyn, who understood Orthodoxy poorly,
took his understanding of it only from its external manifestations… His
mystical imagination inclined in favour of secrecy, fancifulness, originality…
He became simultaneously the devotee of all the representatives of contemporary
mysticism, such as Mrs. Krunder, the society of Quakers, Jung Schtilling, the
pastors… etc. Moreover, he became the pitiful plaything of all the contemporary
sectarians, all the religious utopians, the representatives of all the
religious theories, beginning with the Masons and ending with the … eunuch
Selivanov and the half-mad Tatarinova. In truth, Prince Golitsyn at the same
time protected the mystics and the pietists, and gave access into Russia to the
English missionaries, and presented a broad field of activity to the Jesuits,
who, thanks to the protection of the Minister of Religious Affairs, sowed a
large part of Russia with their missions… He himself personally took part in the
prayer-meetings of the Quakers and waited, together with them, for the
overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, he himself took part in the religious
gatherings of Tatarinova, which were orgies reminiscent of the Shamans and
khysts…. Thanks to Prince Golitsyn, mystical literature received all rights of
citizenship in Russia – works shot through with mystical ravings were
distributed en masse… By the direct order of Prince Golitsyn all the more
significant mystical works and translations were distributed to all the
dioceses to the diocesan bishops. In some dioceses two thousand copies of one
and the same work were sent to some dioceses… Prince Golitsyn… acted… in the
name of the Holy Synod… and in this way contradicted himself;… the Synod as it
were in its own name distributed works which actually went right against
Orthodoxy…. He strictly persecuted the appearance of such works as were
negatively oriented towards mysticism… Many of the simple people, on reading
the mystical works that came into their hands, … were confused and perplexed.”[512]
Something of the atmosphere of St.
Petersburg at that time can be gathered from the recollections of the future
Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov), when he went there for service in the newly
reformed ecclesiastical schools in 1809. “The Synod greeted him with the advice
to read ‘Swedenborg’s Miracles’ and learn French. He was taken to court
to view the fireworks and attend a masquerade party in order to meet Prince
Golitsyn…, quite literally ‘amidst the noise of a ball’… This was Philaret’s
first masquerade ball, and he had never before seen a domino. ‘At the time I
was an object of amusement in the Synod,’ Philaret recalled, ‘and I have
remained a fool’.”[513]
This confused religious atmosphere had a
direct effect on politics. Thus Tsar Alexander proposed a “Holy Alliance” of
the victors over Napoleon – that is, Russia, Austria and Germany (Britain
refused to join) – not simply for the sake of creating a common front against
the revolution, but because Alexander conceived the three nations as forming
“one Christian nation”. Even some renowed churchmen were, at least temporarily,
drawn into this “proto-ecumenist” project.[514]
Fortunately, however, later tsars, while retaining the politics of alliances
with monarchical states against the revolution, did not attach to it that
ecumenist religious significance given to it by Tsar Alexander…
Perhaps the main conduit of ecumenist
ideas in Alexander’s reign was the Bible Society. “Founded in 1804 in England
by Methodists and Masons, the Bible Society extended its wide activity also in
Russia. The Society had large financial resources. In 1810 the monetary
contributions of the Bible Society attained 150,000 rubles, and at the end of
1823 there were already 300 such societies in Russia. Under the mask of love
for one’s neighbour and the spreading of the word of God, the bible societies
began to conduct oral propaganda and publish books directed against [the
Orthodox Christian] religion and the State order. These books were published under
the management of the censor, which was attached to the Ministry of Spiritual
Affairs and Popular Enlightenment, which was headed by the Emperor Alexander’s
close friend, Prince A.N. Golitsyn. The main leaders of the bible societies
were members of the Masonic lodges, who preached the rejection of Orthodoxy,
the Church and the rites of the Church. In 1819 there was published
Stankevich’s book, ‘A conversation in the coffin of a child’, which was hostile
to the institution of the Orthodox Church. Then Yastrebov published a work
entitled ‘An appeal to men to follow the inner promptings of the Spirit of
Christ’. This work was recognised to be a sermon ‘of seditious elements against
the Christian religion’ and the good order of the State. In 1824 there appeared
‘a blasphemous interpretation of the Gospel’ published by the director of the
Russian Bible Society. This work openly pursued the aim of stirring up people
against the Church and the Throne. Besides the publication of books directed
against Orthodoxy, foreign religious propaganda was conducted. Two Catholic
priests from Southern Germany, Gosner and Lindl, preached Protestantism, a sect
beloved by the Masons. The Methodists and other sectarians sowed their tares
and introduced heresies amidst the Orthodox. At the invitation of the Mason
Speransky, the very pope of Masonry, Fessler, came and took charge of the work
of destroying the Orthodox Church.
“The Orthodox clergy were silent. It was
impossible to speak against the evil that was being poured out everywhere. All
the powerful men of the world were obedient instruments of Masonry. His
Majesty, who was falsely informed about the aims and tasks of the Bible Society
by Prince Golitsyn, gave the latter his protection from on high.”[515]
“Golitsyn,” writes Oleg Platonov, “invited
to the leadership of the Bible Society only certain hierarchs of the Russian
Church that were close to him. He de facto removed the Holy Synod from
participation in this matter. At the same time he introduced into it secular
and clerical persons of other confessions, as if underlining that ‘the aim of
the Society is higher than the interests of one, that is the Russian Church,
and that it develops its activities in the interests of the whole of
Christianity and the whole of the Christian world’.[516]
“As the investigator of the Bible Society
I.A. Chistovich wrote in 1873, ‘this indifferent cosmopolitanism in relation to
the Church, however pure its preachers might be in their ideal simplicity of
heart, was, however, was an absurdity at that, as at any other time. Orthodoxy
is, factually speaking, the existing form of the Christian faith of the
Greco-Russian Church, and is completely in accord with the teaching and
statutes of the Ancient Universal Church. Therefore Christianity in its correct
ecclesiastical form only exists in the Orthodox Church and cannot have over or
above it any other idea… But the Bible Society was directed precisely to such
an ideal, and they sought it out or presupposed it.’
“In an official document of the Bible
Society the ideas of Masonic ecumenism were openly declared. ‘The heavenly
union of faith and love,’ it says in a report of the Russian Bible Society in
1818, ‘founded by means of Bible Societies in the great Christian family,
reveal the beautiful dawn of the wedding day of Christians and that time when
there will be one pastor and one flock, that is, when there will be one Divine
Christian religion in all the various formations of Christian confessions.’
“The well-known Russian public figure, the
academic A.S. Shishkov wrote on this score: ‘Let us look at the acts of the
Bible Societies, let us see what they consist of. It consists in the intention
to construct ouf of the whole human race one general republic or other and one
religion – a dreamy and undiscriminating opinion, born in the minds either of
deceivers or of the vainly wise… If the Bible Societies are trying only to
spread piety, as they say, then why do they not unite with our Church, but
deliberately act separate from her and not in agreement with her? If their
intention consists in teaching Christian doctrines, does not our Church teach
them to us? Can it be that we were not Christians before the appearance of the
Bible Societies? And just how do they teach us this? They recruit heterodox
teachers and publish books contrary to Christianity!… Is it not strange – even,
dare I say it, funny – to see our metropolitans and hierarchs in the Bible
Societies sitting, contrary to the apostolic reules, together with Lutherans,
Catholics, Calvinists and Quakers – in a word, with all the heterodox? They
with their grey hairs, and in their cassocks and klobuks, sit with laymen of
all nations, and a man in a frock suit preaches to them the Word of God (of God
as they call it, but not in fact)! Where is the decency, where the dignity of
the church server? Where is the Church? They gather in homes where there often
hang on the walls pictures of pagan gods or lascivious depictions of lovers,
and these gatherings of theirs – which are without any Divine services, with
the reading of prayers or the Gospel, sitting as it were in the theatre,
without the least reverence – are equated with Church services, and a house
without an altar, unconsecrated, where on other days they feast and dance, they
call the temple of God! Is this not similar to Sodom and Gomorrah?’”[517]
At this critical moment for both Russia
and Orthodoxy, God raised up righteous defenders of the faith, such as
Archimandrite, later Bishop Innocent (Smirnov) and then Metropolitan Michael
(Desnitsky), who in 1821, as Rusak writes, “openly spoke out against Golitsyn.
He was joined by the favourite of the tsar, Count A. Arakcheev. But the main
burden of the struggle with Golitsyn was borne by the superior of the Yuriev
monastery [Novgorod], Archimandrite Photius (Spassky) and the president of the
Russian Academy, Admiral A. Shishkov.”[518]
Fr. Photius, whose earlier career was
under the protection of Metropolitan Philaret (Drozdov), began his open defence
of Orthodoxy began in 1817. “Bureaucratic and military Petersburg were angry
with the bold reprover. His first speech was unsuccessful. Photius’ struggle…
against the apostates from Orthodoxy, the followers of the so-called inner
Church, ended with his expulsion from Petersburg.
“After the expulsion of Photius the Masons
celebrated their victory. But the joy of the conquerors turned out to be
short-lived. The exile was found to have followers. Photius received special
support at a difficult time of his life from the great righteous woman,
Countess Anna Alexeevna Orlova-Chesmenskaia, who presented a model of piety.
She not only protected him, but chose him as her leader and confessor. The
firmness and courage with which Photius fought against the enemies of Orthodoxy
attracted the mind and heart of Countess Orlova, a woman of Christian humility
and virtue. After the death of her instructor, Countess Orlova explained why it
was Photius whom she chose as her spiritual director. “He attracted my attention,”
wrote Countess Orlova, “by the boldness and fearlessness with which he, being a
teacher of the law of God at the cadet corps and a young monk, began to attack
the dominant errors in faith. Everybody was against him, beginning with the
Court. He did not fear this. I wanted to get to know him and entered into
correspondence with him. His letters seemed to me to be some kind of apostolic
epistles. After getting to know him better, I became convinced that he
personally sought nothing for himself.’
“Soon his enemies, too, felt the spiritual
strength and power of Photius. In 1822 Prince A.N. Golitsyn became acquainted
with Photius and tried to incline him to his side. The meetings of Prince
Golitsyn with Archimandrite Photius made a great impression on the former,
which he noted in his letters to Countess Orlova. In these letters to Countess
Orlova Prince Golitsyn calls Photius ‘an unusual person’ and recognises that
‘the edifying conversation of Photius has a power that only the Lord could
give’. In one of his letters to Countess Orlova Prince Golitsyn expresses
regret that he cannot enjoy the conversation of ‘our Chrysostom’ and that he
‘wants to quench my thirst with pure water drawn up by a pure hand and not by
the hand of one who communicates to others stingily.’
“Prince Golitsyn’s attempt by subtle
flattery to bring Archimandrite to his side was unsuccessful. A rapprochement
and union between Archimandrite Photius, a pure and true zealot of Orthodoxy,
with Prince Golitsyn, an enemy of the faith and the Church, was impossible.
“On April 22, 1822 Archimandrite Photius
went to Petersburg. There his ‘great toil’ began. Every day, according to the
witness of Archimandrite Photius himself, he was called to various people to
talk about the Lord, the Church, the faith, and the salvation of the soul.
Eminent and learned noblemen and noblewomen gathered to hear him talk about the
Lord. But such conversations took place especially in the house of the virgin
Anna, Abba Photius’ daughter, of the noblewoman Daria Derzhavina, and sometimes
in the Tauris palace.
“Without fear or hypocrisy Photius
reproved the enemies of Orthodoxy.
“Once in 1822 Archimandrite Photius began
to reprove Golitsyn, who could not stand it and began to leave the living-room,
but Photius loudly shouted after him: ‘Anathema! Be accursed! Anathema!’
“By this time the Emperor Alexander
himself returned.
“Rumours about the cursing of Prince
Golitsyn had reached the ears of the Emperor, and he demanded that Photius come
and explain himself. At first the Emperor received the fearless reprover
threateningly, but then he changed his wrath for mercy. The Emperor was struck
by the bold speech of the simple monk against the lofty official, who also
happened to be a close friend of the Emperor himself. Photius described
Golitsyn to the Emperor as an atheist, and the Bible Society headed by him - as a nest of faithlessness that threatened
to overthrow the Orthodox Church. At the end of the conversation Photius began
to speak to the Emperor about what was most necessary.
“These are his remarkable words:
“’The enemies of the holy Church and
Kingdom have greatly strengthened themselves; evil faith and temptations are
openly and boldly revealing themselves, they want to create evil secret
societies that are a great harm to the holy Church of Christ and the Kingdom,
but they will not succeed, there is nothing to fear from them, it is necessary
immediately to put an end to the successes of the secret and open enemies in the
capital itself.’
“The Emperor ‘repeatedly kissed the hand
that blessed him’ and, when Photius was leaving, ‘the Tsar fell to his knees
before God and, turning to face Photius, saidk: ‘Father, lay your hands on my
head and say the Lord’s prayer over me, and forgive and absolve me’.
“Under his influence there appeared a
rescript dated August 1, 1822 and addressed to Kochubey, who was in charge of
the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which commanded the closure of all secret
societies, including the Masonic lodges, and not to open them again. All the
members of these societies were obliged not to join any Masonic lodges or other
secret societies. Military and civil ranks were required to declare that they
did not belong to such societies, and to sign that from now on they would not
belong to them. If they did not want to undertake such an obligation, then they
were to be removed from the service.
“During his struggle with the Masons [of
whom he wrote: ‘the Masonic faith is of Antichrist, and its whole teaching and
writings are of the devil’[519]],
Archimandrite Photius for a long time spared Golitsyn. During his meeting with
the Empress he spoke mainly about the Masons Popov, Runich, Turgenev and
Koshelev.
“For two years Photius exhorted Golitsyn
to abandon his errors. On April 23, 1824 Photius said to him: ‘I beseech you,
for the Lord’s sake, stop the books which have been published during your
ministry against the Church, the authority of the Tsar and every holy thing,
and in which revolution is clearly announded, or tell the Anointed of God about
it’.
“On April 25, 1824 another meeting took
place at Golitsyn’s request. Golitsyn asked for Photius’ blessing, but Photius,
before blessing him, said to the prince: ‘In the book “The Mystery of the
Cross”, the following was printed under your supervision: the clergy are
beasts, that is, helpers of the Antichrist. I, Photius, one of the clergy and a
priest of God, do not want to bless you, nor do you need it.’
“’For this alone?’ asked Golitsyn.
“’And for protecting the sects, the
false-prophets, and for taking part in sedition against the Church with Gosner.
In you are fulfilled the words of Jeremiah,’ said Photius, indicating the 23rd
chapter of his prophecy. ‘Read and repent,’ added Photius.
“’I do not want to read, I do not want to
listen to your righteousness!’ shouted Golitsyn, and with these words he ran
away from Photius.
“Photius continued to be in touch with his
Majesty, which was helped by Countess Anna Orlova, the widow Derzhavina,
Shishkov and others.
“In the spring of 1824 Photius wrote two
epistles to his Majesty. In one of them he said that ‘in our time many books,
and many societies and private people are talking about some kind of new
religion, which is supposedly pre-established for the last times. This new
religion, which is preached in various forms, sometimes under the form of a new
world…, sometimes of a new teaching, sometimes of the coming of Christ in the
Spirit, sometimes of the union of the churches, sometimes under the form of
some renewal and of Christ’s supposed thousand-year reign, sometimes insinuated
under the form of a so-called new religion – is apostasy from the faith of God,
the faith of the apostles and the fathers. It is faith in the coming
Antichrist, it is propelling the revolution, it is thirsting for blood, it is
filled with the spirit of Satan. Its false-prophets and apostles are
Jung-Stilling, Eckartshausen, Thion, Bohme, Labzin, Fessler and the
Methodists…’
“His Majesty was favourably disposed to
the epistle of Archimandrite Photius in spite of the fact that it contained
criticism of all his recent friends and of the people who had enjoyed his
protection. Almost at the same time there appeared the book of Gosner, about whose
harmful line Archimandrite Photius had reported to his Majesty on April 17,
1824.
“On April 20, 1824, Emperor Alexander
received Photius, who was ordered: ‘Come by the secret entrance and staircase
into his Majesty’s study so that nobody should know about this’. Their
conversation lasted for three hours, and on May 7 Photius sent his second
epistle with the title: ‘Thoroughly correct the work of God. The plan for the
revolution published secretly, or the secret iniquities practised by secret society
in Russia and everywhere.’
“On April 29 Photius gave his Majesty
another note: ‘To your question how to stop the revolution, we are praying to
the Lord God, and look what has been revealed. Only act immediately. The way of
destroying the whole plan quietly and successfully is as follows: 1) to abolish
the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs and remove two others from a well-known
person; 2) to abolish the Bible Society under the pretext that there are
already many printed Bibles, and they are now not needed; 3) the Synod is, as
before, to supervise education, to see if there is anything against the
authorities and the faith anywhere; 4) to remove Koshelev, exile Gosner, exile
Fessler and exile the Methodists, albeit the leading ones. The Providence of God
is now to do nothing more openly.’
“This flaming defence of Orthodoxy [by
Photius] together with Metropolitan Seraphim was crowned with success: on May
15, 1824 the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs was abolished.”[520]
The Tsar has paid heed to Photius’ appeal:
“God conquered the visible Napoleon who invaded Russia; may He conquer the
spiritual Napoleon through you!” However, according to Elagin, “Alexander I was
himself too much bound by the mistakes of his youth to follow the new policy of
‘reaction’ to the end. For years he had desired to put down the reins of
government, and there is much circumstantial evidence to support the widespread
belief in Russian that he staged his own ‘death’ at a remote town in the south
of Russia [Taganrog] and lived the last 39 years of his life as a
recluse-ascetic under the name of ‘Fyodor Kuzmich’.[521]
The new conservative policy which
Nicholas, Alexander’s brother and successor, consistently followed for the next
thirty years, probably postponed Russia’s revolution by at least fifty years
and preserved the Orthodox Church in Russia from the movement of ‘ecumenical’
Christianity. In view of all this, one need not be surprised at the recorded
statement of ‘Fyodor Kuzmich’ that Archimandrite Photius was the ‘savior of
Russia’….”[522]
The
Serbian Revolution
In Greece and the Balkans the ideas of the
French revolution found expression in national liberation movements, which
succeeded in liberating a large part of the Orthodox lands in Europe from the
Turkish yoke. The vital question for these lands as they gradually liberated
themselves in the course of the 19th century was: would freedom
allow them to re-establish the genuinely Orthodox “symphonic” model of
Church-State relations which had prevailed throughout the region before the
fall of Constantinople? Unfortunately, the answer in the case of each newly
emergent state – Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria – was: no.
The first condition of Orthodox “symphony”
is the existence of a genuinely independent Orthodox Church able to exert a
strong moral influence on the powers that be. After the Turkish conquest, the
influence of the Serbian Church even increased, and thanks to the collaborative
policies of the Serb leaders after Kosovo, the Turks even allowed the re-establishment
of the Serbian Patriarchate at Peć in 1557. As Branimir Anzulovic writes,
“it no longer served the Serbian state because that state had ceased to exist;
but it served the Ottoman state, and as the only surviving national
institution, it became the main carrier of Serbian national identity. Its
nonreligiou functions were even expanded under the Turkish system of millets –
ethnoreligious communities of non-Islamic peoples, which enjoyed a considerable
degree of religious and cultural autonomy and were in charge of administrative
duties such as the collection of taxes… [One] scholar described the Serbian
Orthodox Church, at the time of the Peć patriarchate, as “a sort of a
vassal clerocratic state within the framework of the power military-feudal empire”’”.[523]
The Serbian Church was in general loyal to
its Turkish masters (the first patriarch of the Peć patriarchate was a
close relative of the Grand Vizier Mehmet Pasha Sokollu).[524]
However, when, in 1690, King Leopold I of Hungary invited them to cross over to
his land, 40,000 Serbs (according to another source, 37,000 families) took up
his invitation with the blessing of Patriarch Arsenije III. This led to the
foundation of the Serbian metropolitanate of Karlovcy in Slavonia in 1713.
Towards the end of the 19th century, there were six dioceses under
Karlovcy with about a million faithful.[525]
In 1766 the Peć patriarchate was abolished, as was the autocephalous
archbishopric of Ochrid in the following year. From that time the role of the
Church decreased, without ever ceasing to be important, and non-Orthodox
political models and theories began to infiltrate Serbian society, not least
the nationalist ideas of the French revolution, which played a significant part
in the Serbs’ own revolution in the first half of the 19th century.
The Serbian revolution began as a
rebellion against the Dahis, the four top Janissary commanders, who were
terrorising both the Serbs and the Muslims in the province and effectively
annulling the autonomy that the sultan had given them.
Tim Judah writes: “Local leaders,
including Kardjordje, a swine dealer who had fought both in the Austrian
Freikorps and in the Turkish-organised Serbian army, began to plot their
removal. But the Dahis struck first. In early 1804 they executed up to 150 of
the Serbian knezes or local leaders in an operation they called ‘The Cutting
Down of the Chiefs’. It was this that provoked the rebellion. At first the
Serbs did not claim to be fighting to rid themselves of Ottoman domination but
rather claimed to be rebelling in the name of the sultan against the repressive
Dahis. Karadjordje was elected as leader of the uprising on 14 February 1804.
He soon succeeded in liberating almost all of the pashalik, especially after
the sultan ordered forces from Bosnia to intervene to finish off the Dahis.
“At this early stage, the Serbs were
joined by at least part of the pashalik’s Muslim population, whom the Serbs
called the ‘Good Turks’, and who were also keen to rid themselves of the
rapacious Dahis. However, as the Serb aim soon changed to a demand for complete
independence, co-operation rapidly turned to confrontation and massacre.
“In the negotiations that followed the
defeat of the Dahis, the Serbs demanded the restoration of their autonomy, but
the Turks became alarmed. The rebels were making contact with Serbs in other
parts of the Ottoman Empire and with semi-independent Montenegro. Karadjordje
had also sent a delegation to Russia to appeal for help, and he was talking ‘of
throwing off the yoke that the Serb has borne since Kosovo’. Another Ottoman
army was sent to crush the rebels, but it was soundly beaten at Ivankovac on 18
August 1805. Meeting in Smederovo in 1805, the insurgents decided not only to
repudiate the pashalik’s annual tribute to the sultan but to take the struggle
beyond the borders of the province. In reply a jihad or holy war was
declared against them.
“At the end of 1806, Russia went to war
with the Ottomans, and the Serbs were encouraged to keep fighting. A modest
Russian force was sent to fight alongside the Serbs. Within weeks, though, the
Russians and the Turks signed the Treaty of Slobozia, in which neither side
bothered to mention the Serbs…
“In 1809, fighting between the Serbs and
Turks resumed, with some Russian help. Russia soon needed to muster all its
strength to counter Napoleon’s campaign of 1812, so a peace treaty was
concluded in Bucharest with the Turks. It specified that Serbia would revert to
Ottoman rule, with the proviso that there would be a general amnesty for
participants in the insurrection. The Serbs rejected this, but their defences
collapsed in the ensuing Turkish onslaught. Karadjordje fled, along with
thousands of refugees, who sought protection in the Habsburg provinces,
Wallachia and Russia. The Turkish vengeance was terrible. Villages were burned
and thousand were sent into slavery. On 17 October 1813 alone, 1,800 women and
children were sold as slaves in Belgrade. Soon afterwards a halt was called to
the reprisals, and many of the refugees began returning. Some of the former
insurgent leaders, such as Miloš Obrenović from the Rudnik district
(who had not fled), now made their peace with the Turks, who confirmed them in
their local positions of power. It was an untenable situation. In 1814, one of
Karadjordje’s former commanders started a new rebellion, but it did not catch
on. In the wake of the fresh reprisals following its defeat, however,
preparations were made for yet another uprising. Led by Obrenović, the
rebels had by mid-July 1815 succeeded in freeing a large part of the pashalik.
“Just as before, it was the international
situation which helped shape developments. With Napoleon defeated at Waterloo
in 1815, the Turks were wary of the Russians in case they intervened again on
behalf of the Serbs. So, after much negotiation, a deal was struck with
Obrenović. The Belgrade pashalik was to become an autonomous province.
Serbian chiefs were granted the right to collect taxes, but the Turks could
remain only in the towns and forts of the province.
“Obrenović was born in 1783 into a
poor family which had originally come to Serbia from Hercegovina. As a child he
tended cattle for his neighbours and later joined his brother, who had his own
livestock business. He was a brave commander in the first uprising and after
the second he proved himself a shrewd but brutal and murderous politician. He
constantly sought increased concessions from the Turks while he gradually
undermined their residual power in Serbia. In 1817, influence by Philike
Hetairia, the Greek revolutionary secret society, Karadjordje slipped back into
Serbia. Sensing danger for both himself and his plans, Obrenović sent his
agents who murdered Karadjordje with an axe. His skinned head was stuffed and
sent to the sultan. This act was to spark off a feud between the families which
was periodically to convulse Serbian politics until 1903. Then the last
Obrenović and his wife were murdered by being thrown out of the palace
windows in Belgrade. The hapless King Aleksandar allegedly grabbed the parapet,
but he fell to his death after one of the conspirators used his sword to chop
off his fingers.
“Miloš Obrenović was as rapacious as
any Turk had been in collecting taxes. As his rule became ever more oppressive,
there were seven rebellions against him including three major uprisings between
1815 and 1830. In 1830 the sultan nevertheless formally accepted Miloš’s
hereditary princeship…”[526]
It was hardly to be expected that such a
ruler would restore the glorious traditions of St. Savva and the Nemanja
dynasty. And Serbian history from now on was dominated by two sharply
contrasting, but equally unOrthodox ideologies: the westernizing, secular
tradition deriving from the Enlightenment and represented by Dositej
Obradović (d. 1811) and the Pannonian Serbs, and the bloodthirsty,
tribal-heroic and nationalist tradition represented by the Montenegrin bishop-prince
and poet Petar Petrović Njegoš (d. 1851). “Consequently,” writes
Anzulovic, “there are three pivotal figures in Serbian culture: Saint Sava, who
united church and state; Obradović, who tried to separate them; and
Njegoš, who revealed the terrifying consequences of a radical union of the
two.”[527]
The radical union of Church and State in
Montenegro was a result of Montenegro’s special position as the only completely
independent Orthodox land in the Balkans. Fortescue writes: “In 1516, Prince
George, fearing lest quarrels should weaken his people (it was an elective
princedom), made them swear always to elect the bishop as their civil ruler as
well. These prince-bishops were called Vladikas… In the 18th century
the Vladika Daniel I (1697-1737) succeeded in securing the succession for his
own family. As Orthodox bishops have to be celibate, the line passed (by an
election whose conclusion was foregone) from uncle to nephew, or from cousin to
cousin. At last, in 1852, Danilo, who succeeded his uncle as Vladika, wanted to
marry, so he refused to be ordained bishop and turned the prince-bishopric into
an ordinary secular princedom. Since then, another person has been elected
Metropolitan of Cetinje, according to the normal Orthodox custom.”[528]
In view of the Serbian wars of the 1990s,
it is important to note the long-term influence of the Montenegrim
Prince-Bishop Njegoš’ famous poem, The Mountain Wreath, which
glorifies the mass slaughter of Muslims who refuse to convert to Christianity
on a certain Christmas Eve. The principal character, Vladyka Danilo, says:
We will baptize with water or with blood!
We’ll drive the plague out of the pen!
Let the son of horror ring forth,
A true altar on a blood-stained rock!
And in
another poem Njegoš writes that “God’s dearest sacrifice is a boiling
stream of tyrant’s blood”.[529]
An armed struggle against the infidel for
the sake of Christ and His glory could indeed serve as the subject of a worthy
and truly Christian glorification. But there is little that is Christian in
this bishop’s poem. Even Bishop Nikolai Velimirović, and admirer of
Njegoš, had to admit: “Njegoš’s Christology is almost rudimentary. No
Christian priest has ever said less about Christ than this metropolitan from
Cetinje.”[530]
This bloodthirsty, nationalist and only
superficially Christian tradition, which was continued by such figures as the
poet Vuk Karadžić, who called the Serbs “the greatest people on the
planet” and boosted the nation’s self-esteem “by describing a culture 5,000
years old and claiming that Jesus Christ and His apostles had been Serbs”[531],
was to have profound effects on the future of Serbia, and through Serbia, on
European history as a whole.
The Greek Revolution
In Greece, as in Serbia, the ideas of the
French revolution caused great excitement – and hardly less nationalist
bombast. Thus Benjamin of Lesbos wrote: “Nature has set limits to the
aspirations of other men, but not to those of the Greeks. The Greeks were not
in the past and are not now subject to the laws of nature.”[532]
The dreams of the Greeks were excited by a
number of causes. First, there were the political factors: the rebellion of the
Muslim warlord Ali Pasha against the Sultan in 1820 and the inexorable gradual
southward expansion of the Russian Empire, which drew Greek minds to the
prophecies about the liberation of “the City”, Constantinople, by to xanthon
genos, “the yellow-haired race” – whom the Greeks identified with the
Russians. Secondly, the wealthier merchants chafed at the restrictions on the
accumulation of capital in the Ottoman empire, and longed for the more
business-friendly kind of regime that their travels acquainted them with in
Western Europe. And thirdly, and most importantly, in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, these merchants
subsidised an explosion in the publication of Greek books and in the provision
of educational opportunities for young Greeks in the universities of Western
Europe and, especially, Germany. “Here,” writes Clogg, “they came into contact
not only with the heady ideas of the Enlightenment, of the French Revolution
and of romantic nationalism but they were made aware of the extraordinary hold
which the language and civilisation of ancient Greece had over the minds of
their educated European contemporaries.
“During the centuries of the Tourkokratia
knowledge of the ancient Greek world had all but died out, but, under the
stimulus of western classical scholarship, the budding intelligentsia developed
an awareness that they were the heirs to an heritage that was universally
revered throughout the civilised world. By the eve of the war in independence
this progonoplexia (ancestor obsession) and arkhaiolatreia
(worship of antiquity), to use the expressive Greek terms, had reached almost
obsessive proportions. It was precisely during the first decade of the
nineteenth century that nationalists, much to the consternation of the Church
authorities, began to baptise their children with the names of (and to call
their ships after) the worthies of ancient Greece rather than the Christian
saints….”[533]
The Church’s concern was fully
understandable; for the revolutionary ideas inflaming the minds of young Greeks
were far from Orthodox. Moreover, these ideas influenced even some prominent
churchmen, laying the seeds for the Church schism that was to take place during
the revolution. The opposing views with regard to the revolution were
especially incarnate in two hierarchs who came from the same village of
Dhimitsana in the Peloponnese: the Hieromartyr Patriarch Gregory V of
Constantinople, and Metropolitan Germanus of Old Patras.
When the Phanariot Greek Alexander
Ypsilantis raised the standard of revolt by crossing from Russia into
Turkish-occupied Romania with a small band of Greeks in 1821, a simultaneous
rebellion took place in the Peloponnese under the leadership of Metropolitan
Germanos and eight other bishops. Ypsilantis' force was soon crushed, for it
was repudiated by both the Russian Tsar and the Romanian peasants.[534]
But Germanos' campaign prospered, in spite of the deaths of five of the bishops
in prison; and soon the south of Greece and the islands of Hydra, Spetsae and
Poros were in Greek hands.
At this point the frightened Turks put
pressure on Patriarch Gregory and his Synod to anathematize the insurgents.
They obeyed. Some have argued that the patriarch secretly repudiated this
anathema and sympathized with the insurgents; which is why the Turks, suspecting
him of treachery, hanged him on April 10. However, the evidence does not
support this view. The patriarch’s righteousness of his character precludes the
possibility that he could have been plotting against a government to which he
had sworn allegiance and for which he prayed in the Divine Liturgy. Moreover,
he had always refused to join the philiki hetairia, the secret,
masonic-style society to which most of the insurgents (including Metropolitan
Germanus) belonged. This society, founded among the Greek diaspora in Odessa in
1814, was created with the aim of liberating the Motherland from the Ottoman
empire. Its essentially pagan inspiration is indicated by its initiation
rituals, which carried the penalty of death for those who betrayed the secret
and commended the initiate “to the protection of the Great Priests of the
Eleusinian Mysteries”. [535] By 1821
almost a thousand members had been initiated into the society. Significantly,
the patriarch’s body was washed up on the shore at Odessa, mutely pointing to
where the organisation that had truly caused his death was centred.
The essentially western ideology of the
Greek revolution explains why there was such an enormous movement among western
young men, among whom the most famous was the poet Byron, to join the Greek
freedom-fighters. But they were fighting, not for Orthodox Greece, but for
their romantic vision of ancient, pagan Greece. Significantly, there were no
volunteers from Orthodox Russia, whose tsars correctly saw in the revolutionary
spirit a greater threat to the well-being of the Orthodox peoples than Turkish
rule.
The Church’s attitude to the revolution
had been expressed in a work called Paternal Teaching which appeared in
the year of the French revolution 1789, and which, according to Charles Frazee,
"was signed by Anthimus of Jerusalem but was probably the work of the
later Patriarch Gregory V. The document is a polemic against revolutionary
ideas, calling on the Christians 'to note how brilliantly our Lord, infinite in
mercy and all-wise, protects intact the holy and Orthodox Faith of the devout,
and preserves all things'. It warns that the devil is constantly at work
raising up evil plans; among them is the idea of liberty, which appears to be
so good, but is only there to deceive the people. The document points out that
[the struggle for] political freedom is contrary to the Scriptural command to
obey authority, that it results in the impoverishment of the people, in murder
and robbery. The sultan is the protector of Christian life in the Ottoman
Empire; to oppose him is to oppose God."[536]
Patriarch Gregory was also a determined
opponent of the religious ecumenism that was the other side of the coin of
Masonry’s call to revolutionary violence: “Let us neither say nor think that [they
who teach erroneous doctrines] also believe in one Lord, have one Baptism, and
confess the one Faith. If their opinions are correct, then by necessity our own
must be incorrect. But if our own doctrines are upheld and believed and given
credence and confessed by all as being good, true, correct, and unadulterated,
manifestly then, the so-called sacraments of all heretics are evil, bereft of
divine grace, abominable, and loathsome, and the grace of ordination and the
priesthood by which these sacraments are performed has vanished and departed
from them. And when there is no priesthood, all the rest are dead and bereft of
spiritual grace. We say these things, beloved, lest anyone – either man or
woman – be misled by the heterodox regarding their apparent sacraments and
their so-called Christianity. Rather, let each one stand firmly in the
blameless and true Faith of Christ, especially that we may draw to ourselves
those who have been led astray and, as though they were own members, unite them
to the one Head, Christ, to Whom be glory and dominion unto the ages of ages.
Amen.”[537]
Certainly, the Greeks had to pay a heavy
price for the political freedom they gained. After the martyrdom of Patriarch
Gregory, the Turks ran amok in Constantinople, killing many Greeks and causing
heavy damage to the churches; and there were further pogroms in Smyrna,
Adrianople, Crete and especially Chios, which had been occupied by the
revolutionaries and where in reprisal tens of thousands were killed or sold
into slavery. When the new patriarch, Eugenios, again anathematised the
insurgents, twenty-eight bishops and almost a thousand priests in free Greece
in turn anathematised the patriarch, calling him a Judas and a wolf in sheep's
clothing, and ceasing to commemorate him in the Liturgy.
As for the new State of Greece, it
"looked to the west," writes Charles Frazee, "the west of the
American and French Revolutions, rather than to the old idea of an Orthodox
community as it had functioned under the Ottomans. The emotions of the times
did not let men see it; Orthodoxy and Greek nationality were still identified,
but the winds were blowing against the dominant position of the Church in the
life of the individual and the nation..."[538]
Thus, forgetting the lessons of the
council of Florence four hundred years earlier, the new State and Church
entered into negotiations with the Pope for help against the Turks.
Metropolitan Germanus was even empowered to speak concerning the possibility of
a reunion of the Churches. However, it was the Pope who drew back at this
point, pressurized by the other western States which considered the sultan to
be a legitimate monarch. The western powers helped Greece again when, in 1827,
an Allied fleet under a British admiral destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet at
Navarino. But after the assassination of the president of Greece, Count
Kapodistrias, in 1832, the country descended further into poverty and near
civil war.
Then, in 1833, the western powers
appointed a Catholic prince, Otto of Bavaria, as king of Greece, with three
regents until he came of age, the most important being the Protestant George
von Maurer. Maurer proceeded to work out a constitution for the country, which
proposed autocephaly for the Church under a Synod of bishops, and the
subordination of the Synod to the State on the model of the Bavarian and
Russian constitutions, to the extent that "no decision of the Synod could
be published or carried into execution without the permission of the government
having been obtained". In spite of the protests of the patriarch of
Constantinople and the tsar of Russia, and the walk-out of the archbishops of
Rethymnon and Adrianople, this constitution was ratified by the signatures of
thirty-six bishops on July 26, 1833.
The Greek Church therefore exchanged the
admittedly uncanonical position of the patriarchate of Constantinople under
Turkish rule for the even less canonical position of a Synod unauthorized by
the patriarch and under the control of a Catholic king and a Protestant
constitution! In addition to this, all monasteries with fewer than six monks
were dissolved, and heavy taxes imposed on the remaining monasteries. And very
little money was given to a Church which had lost six to seven thousand clergy
in the war, and whose remaining clergy had an abysmally low standard of
education.
In spite of this, Divine grace worked to
transform the situation from within, as it had in Russia. Thus in 1839 the
Synod showed independence in forbidding marriages between Orthodox and
heterodox; and gradually, within the Synod and outside, support for reunion
with the patriarchate grew stronger. Then, in 1843, a bloodless coup forced the
king to dismiss his Bavarian aides and summon a National Assembly to draw up a
constitution in which the indissoluble unity of the Greek Church with
Constantinople was declared. In 1848, an encyclical issued by Pope Pius IX
calling on the Greeks to "return at last to the flock of Christ" was
fiercely attacked by Patriarch Anthimus. Finally, on June 29, 1851, a Synodal
Tomos was read in Constantinople, which re-established relations between the
now officially autocephalous Church of Greece and the other eastern
patriarchates, while at the same time demanding that the Holy Synod of the
Church of Greece should be independent of all secular intervention - which
demand, however, was only partially met when the union was legitimised by the
Greek Assembly in the following year.[539]
The
Decembrist Rebellion
The wave of revolutionary violence reached
Russia on December 14, 1825, when a group of army officers ignominiously failed
to seize power in St. Petersburg and were either executed (the five leaders) or
exiled to Siberia.
The Decembrist conspirators were divided
into a Northern Society based in St. Petersburg and a Southern society based in
Tulchin, headquarters of the Second Army in the Ukraine. “In the ideology of
the Northern Society especially,” writes Walicki, “there were certain elements
reminiscent of the views of the aristocratic opposition of the reign of
Catherine II. Many of the members in this branch of the Decembrist movement
were descendants of once powerful and now impoverished boyar families… Nikita
Muraviev claimed that the movement was rooted in the traditions of Novgorod and
Pskov, of the twelfth-century Boyar Duma, of the constitutional demands
presented to Anne by the Moscow nobility in 1730, and of the eighteenth-century
aristocratic opposition. The poet Kondraty Ryleev painted an idealized portrait
of Prince Andrei Kurbsky (the leader of the boyar revolt against Ivan the
Terrible) and even devoted one of his ‘elegies’ to him…In his evidence before
the Investigating Commission after the suppression of the revolt, Petr
Kakhovsky stated that the movement was primarily a response to the
high-handedness of the bureaucracy, the lack of respect for ancient gentry
freedom, and the favoritism shown to foreigners. Another Northern Decembrist,
the writer and literary critic Aleksandr Bestuzhev… wrote that his aim was
‘monarchy tempered by aristocracy’. These and similar facts explain Pushkin’s
view, expressed in the 1830’s, that the Decembrist revolt had been the last
episode in the age-old struggle between autocracy and boyars…
“The Decembrists used the term ‘republic’
loosely, without appearing to be fully aware that there were essential
differences between, for instance, the Roman republic, the Polish gentry
republic, the old Russian city states, and modern bourgeois republics… Muraviev
modeled his plan for a political system on the United States… The theorists of
the Northern Society made no distinction between criticism of absolutism from
the standpoint of the gentry and similar criticism from a bourgeois point of
view. Hence they saw no difficulty in reconciling liberal notions taken largely
from the works of Bentham, Benjamin Constant and Adam Smith with an
idealization of former feudal liberties and a belief in the role of the
aristocracy as a ‘curb on despotism’. The theoretical premise here was the
‘juridical world view’ of the Enlightenment, according to which legal and
political forms determined the revolution of society.”[540]
The Northern Decembrists were in favour of
a wide range of civil liberties, including freedom for the serfs. However, they
insisted that the land should remain with the gentry, thereby ensuring the
continued dependence of the serfs on the gentry. “The conviction that the
peasants ought to be overjoyed merely at the abolition of serfdom was shared by
many Decembrists. Yakushkin, for instance, could not conceal his exasperation
at his peasants’ demand for land when he offered to free them. When they were
told that the land would remain the property of the landlord, their answer was:
‘Then things had better stay as they were. We belong to the master, but the land
belongs to us.’”[541]
The Northern Decembrists worked out a new
interpretation of Russian history conceived “as an antithesis to Karamzin’s
theory of the beneficial role of autocracy.
“An innate Russian characteristic, the Decembrists maintained – one that
later developments had blunted but not destroyed – was a deep-rooted love of
liberty. Autocracy had been unknown in Kievan Russia: the powers of the princes
had been strictly circumscribed there and decisions on important affairs of
state were taken by the popular assemblies. The Decembrists were especially
ardent admirers of the republican city-states of Novgorod and Pskov. This
enthusiasm was of practical significance, since they were convinced that the
‘spirit of liberty’ that had once imbued their forbears was still alive; let us
but strike the bell, and the people of Novgorod, who have remained unchanged
throughout the centuries, will assemble by the bell tower, Ryleev declared.
Kakhovsky described the peasant communes with their self-governing mir
as ‘tiny republics’, a living survival of Russian liberty. In keeping with this
conception, the Decembrists thought of themselves as restoring liberty
and bringing back a form of government that had sound historical precedents.”[542]
This reinterpretation of Russian history
was false. Russia was imbued from the beginning with the spirit of Orthodox
autocracy and patriarchy: the “republics” of Pskov and Novgorod were exceptions
to the historical rule. And if Kievan autocracy was less powerful than the Muscovite
or Petersburg autocracies, this was not necessarily to its advantage. Russia
succumbed to the Mongols because the dividedness of her princes precluded a
united defence. And there can be little doubt that she would not have survived
into the nineteenth century as an independent Orthodox nation if she had not
been an autocracy.
The leader of the Southern Society,
Colonel Pavel Pestel, had more radical ideas in his draft for a constitution, Russian
Justice. His programme was based on two assumptions: “that every man has a
natural right to exist and thus to a piece of land large enough to allow him to
make a basic living; and that only those who create surplus wealth have a right
to enjoy it. After the overthrow of tsarism, therefore, Pestel proposed to
divide land into two equal sectors: the first would be public property (or,
more accurately, the property of the communes); the second would be in private
hands. The first would be used to ensure everyone a minimum living, whereas the
second would be used to create surplus wealth. Every citizen was entitled to
ask his commune for an allotment large enough to support a family; if the
commune had more land available, he would even be able to demand several such
allotments. The other sector would remain in private hands. Pestel felt that
his program ensured every individual a form of social welfare in the shape of a
communal land allotment but also left scope for unlimited initiative and the
opportunity of making a fortune in the private sector.
“Pestel believed that his program had every
chance of success since land ownership in Russia had traditionally been both
communal and private. Here he obviously had in mind the Russian village
commune; it should be emphasized, however, that Pestel’s commune differed
essentially from the feudal obshchina in that it did not restrict its
members’ movement or personal freedom and did not impose collective
responsibility for individual members’ tax liabilities.”[543]
The Decembrist rebellion was not as
important for what it represented in itself as for the halo of martyrdom which
its exiles acquired, inspiring Herzen and other sons of the gentry in their
much more radical ideas and plans. The Decembrists were romantic dreamers
rather than hardened revolutionaries – one of their leaders, the poet Ryleyev,
mounted the scaffold with a volume of Byron’s works in his hands.[544]
But this did not diminish the evil effect their words and deeds had on the
minds of succeeding generations. And the saints of Russia were severe in their
condemnation: “they say,” writes Platonov, “that in 1825, not long before the
Decembrist rebellion, a Mason, apparently Pestel, asked St. Seraphim for a
blessing. But he shouted angrily at him, as at the greatest criminal and
apostate from Christ: ‘Go where you came from,’ – and threw him out.”[545]
Platonov continues: “N. Webster in her
book World Revolution traces the unbroken line of Masonic and
revolutionary organisations, and convincingly shows the roots of revolutionary
activity in the programme of the destruction “of thrones and altars” of the
Illuminist Order. A direct link is also quite clear, and has been confirmed by
documents, between the Illuminists, Martinists and French Masons, on the one
hand, and the Tugenbund (1812), the Carbonari and the Russian
Decembrist-Masons, on the other. … Decembrism - the direct child of the
Illuminists, the Tugenbund and the Carbonari – decades after its shameful
destruction gave birth to the bloody nihilist movement, ‘The People’s Will’,
and they in their turn – to the no less criminal movement of the Social
Revolutionaries and the Social-Democrats, who covered Russian with the blood of
millions of Orthodox people.”[546]
Still more important was the determination
it instilled in Tsar Nicholas to stamp out revolution everywhere, as he
demonstrated when crushing the Polish rebellion in 1830. Although “enlightened”
Europe condemned him, the great poet Pushkin, who had suffered from the
censorship of the tsar, began to change his liberal views. On August 2, 1830,
just three weeks before the taking of Warsaw by Russian troops, he wrote his
“To the Slanderers of Russia”. From that time, as the friend of the poet’s
brother, Michael Juzefovich, wrote: “His world-view changed, completely and
unalterably. He was already a deeply believing person: [he now became] a
citizen who had changed his mind, having understood the demands of Russian life
and renounced utopian illusions.”[547]
St.
Seraphim of Sarov
In 1844 Nicholas Alexandrovich Motovilov,
a nobleman of Simbirsk province and a close friend of the greatest saint of the
age, Seraphim of Sarov (+1833), made notes of his conversations with the saint,
which provide the best spiritual commentary on the age. At the beginning of the
twentieth century Sergius Alexandrovich Nilus found these notes and published
them as follows:
“… As a demonstration of true zeal for God
Batyushka Seraphim cited the holy Prophet Elijah and Gideon, and for hours at a
time he talked in an inspired manner about them. Every judgement that he made
about them was concluded by its application to life, precisely our own life,
and with an indication of how we… can draw soul-saving instructions from their
lives. He often spoke to me about the holy King, Prophet and Ancestor of God
David, at which point he went into an extraordinary spiritual rapture. How one
had to see him during those unearthly minutes! His face, inspired by the grace
of the Holy Spirit, shone like the sun, and I – I speak the truth – on looking
at him felt in my eyes as if I was looking at the sun. I involuntarily recalled
the face of Moses when he had just come down from Sinai. My soul, pacified,
entered such a quiet, and was filled with such great joy, that my heart was
ready to embrace within itself not only the whole human race, but also the
whole creation of God, pouring out in love towards everything that is of God…
“’So, your Godbelovedness, so,’ Batyushka
used to say, leaping from joy (those who still remember this holy elder will
relate how he would sometimes be seen leaping from joy), ‘”I have chosen David
my servant, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will”’…
“In explaining how good it was to serve
the Tsar and how much his life should be held dear, he gave as an example
Abishai, David’s war-commander.
“’Once,’ said Batyushka Seraphim, ‘to
satisfy the thirst of David, he stole in to a spring in view of the enemy camp
and got water, and, in spite of a cloud of arrows released at him from the
enemy camp, returned to him completely unharmed, bringing the water in his
helmet. He had been saved from the cloud of arrows only because of his zeal
towards the King. But when David gave an order, Abishai replied: “Only command,
O King, and everything will be done in accordance with your will.” But when the
King expressed the desire to take part himself in some bloody deed to encourage
his warriors, Abishai besought him to preserve his health and, stopping him
from participating in the battle, said: “There are many of us, your Majesty,
but you are one among us. Even if all of us were killed, as long as you were
alive, Israel would be whole and unconquered. But if you are gone, then what
will become of Israel?”…’
“Baytushka Fr. Seraphim loved to explain
himself at length, praising the zeal and ardour of faithful subjects to the
Tsar, and desiring to explain more clearly how these two Christian virtues are
pleasing to God, he said:
“’After Orthodoxy, these are our first
Russian duty and the chief foundation of true Christian piety.’
“Often from David he changed the subject
to our great Emperor [Nicholas I] and for hours at a time talked to me about
him and about the Russian kingdom, bewailing those who plotted evil against his
August Person. Clearly revealing to me what they wanted to do, he led me into a
state of horror; while speaking about the punishment prepared for them from the
Lord, and in confirmation of his words, he added:
“’This will happen without fail: the Lord,
seeing the impenitent spite of their hearts, will permit their undertakings to
come to pass for a short period, but their illness will turn upon their heads,
and the unrighteousness of their destructive plots will descend upon them. The
Russian land will be reddened with streams of blood, and many noblemen will be killed
for his great Majesty and the integrity of his Autocracy: but the Lord will not
be wrath to the end, and will not allow the Russian land to be destroyed to the
end, because in it alone will Orthodoxy and the remnants of Christian piety be
especially preserved.
“Once,” as Motovilov continued in his
notes, “I was in great sorrow, thinking what would happened in the future with
our Orthodox Church if the evil contemporary to us would be multiplied more and
more. And being convinced that our Church was in an extremely pitiful state
both from the great amount of carnal debauchery and… from the spiritual impiety
of godless opinions sown everywhere by the most recent false teachers, I very
much wanted to know what Batyushka Seraphim would tell me about this.
“Discussing the holy Prophet Elijah in
detail, he said in reply to my question, among other things, the following:
“’Elijah the Thesbite complained to the
Lord about Israel as if it had wholly bowed the knee to Baal, and said in
prayer that only he, Elijah, had remained faithful to Lord, but now they were
seeking his soul, too, to take it… So what, batyushka, did the Lord reply to
this? “I have left seven thousand men in Israel who have not bowed the knee to
Baal.” So if in the kingdom of Israel, which had fallen away from the kingdom
of Judah that was faithful to God, and had come to a state of complete
corruption, there still remained seven thousand men faithful to the Lord, then
what shall we say about Russia? I think that at that time there were no more
than three million in the kingdom of Israel at that time. And how many do we
have in Russia now, batyushka?’
“I replied: ‘About sixty million.’
“And he continued: ‘Twenty times more.
Judge for yourself how many more of those faithful to God that brings!.. So,
batyushka, those whom He foreknew, He also predestined; and those whom He
predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He guards, and those He
also glorifies… So what is there for us to be despondent about!… God is with
us! He who hopes in the Lord is as Mount Sion, and the Lord is round about His
people… The Lord will keep you, the Lord will protect you on your right hand,
the Lord will preserve your coming in and your going out now and to the ages;
by day the sun will not burn you, nor the moon by night.’
“And when I asked him what this meant, and
to what end he was talking to me about it:
“’To the end,’ replied Batyushka Fr.
Seraphim, ‘that you should know that in this way the Lord guards His people as
the apple of His eye, that is, the Orthodox Christians, who love Him and
with all their heart, and all their mind, in word and deed, day and night serve
Him. And such are those who completely observe all the commandments, dogmas
and traditions of our Eastern Universal Church, and confess the piety handed
down by it with their lips, and really, in all the circumstances of life, act
according to the holy commandments of our Lord Jesus Christ.’
“In confirmation of the fact that there were still
many in the Russian land who remained faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ, who
lived in Orthodoxy and piety, batyushka Fr. Seraphim once said to one
acquaintance of mine – either Fr. Gury, the former guest-master of Sarov, or
Fr. Simeon, the owner of Maslinshensky court, - that once, when he was in the
Spirit, he saw the whole land of Russia, and it was filled and as it were
covered with the smoke of the prayers of believers praying to the Lord…”[548]
St. Seraphim not only clearly condemned
the Decembrists for their attack on the Tsardom: he prophetically saw that this
evil would continue to grow and would lead in the end to the Russian revolution
of 1917: "More than half a century will pass. Then evildoers will raise
their heads high. This will happen without fail: the Lord, seeing the
impenitent evil of their hearts, will allow their enterprises for a short time.
But their sickness will rebound upon their own heads, and the unrighteousness
of their destructive plots will fall upon them. The Russian land will become
red with rivers of blood... Before the birth of the Antichrist there will be a
great, protracted war and a terrible revolution in Russia passing all bounds of
human imagination, for the bloodletting will be most terrible: the rebellions
of Ryazan, Pugachev and the French revolution will be nothing in comparison
with what will take place in Russia. Many people who are faithful to the
fatherland will perish, church property and the monasteries will be robbed; the
Lord's churches will be desecrated; good rich people will be robbed and killed,
rivers of Russian blood will flow..."[549]
The saint also prophesied the fall of
the hierarchs of the official Russian Church during the revolutionary period:
"The Lord has revealed to me, wretched Seraphim, that there will be great
woes on the Russian land, the Orthodox faith will be trampled on, and the
hierarchs of the Church of God and other clergy will depart from the purity of
Orthodoxy. And for this the Lord will severely punish them. I, wretched
Seraphim, besought the Lord for three days and three nights that He would
rather deprive me of the Kingdom of Heaven, but have mercy on them. But the
Lord replied: ‘I will not have mercy on them; for they teach the teachings of
men, and with their tongue honour Me, but their heart is far from Me.'"
And at another time he said that the
hierarchs of that time would become so impious that they would exceed in
impiety the Greek hierarchs of the time of Theodosius the Younger (fifth
century), so that they would not believe in the chief dogma of the faith of
Christ.
St. Seraphim also foresaw his own
canonization in 1903, prophesying that the Tsar and his family would be present
and that they would sing “Christ is risen!” in the summer. And he went on:
"The wonder will not be when they raise my bones: the wonder will be when
humble Seraphim transfers his flesh to Diveyevo [the Moscow Patriarchate claims
to have found his relics and transferred them to Diveyevo in 1991, but this is
disputed by many]. Then Diveyevo will be a universal wonder, for from it the
Lord God will send the Light of Salvation not only for Russia, but also for the
whole world in the times of the Antichrist.
“The Antichrist will be born in Russia
between Petersburg and Moscow, in that great town which will be formed (after
the union of all the Slavic tribes with Russia) from Moscow and Petersburg. It
will be the capital of the Russian people and will be called Moscow-Petrograd,
or the City of the End, which name will be given to it by the Lord God, the
Holy Spirit.
"Before the birth of the Antichrist
there will be a patriarch in the Russian Church. And then an Ecumenical Council
will be convened [according to St. Nilus the myrrh-gusher: “a last and eighth
Ecumenical Council to deal with the disputes of heretics and separate the wheat
from the chaff], the aim of which will be: 1. To give a last warning to the
world against the general antichristian blindness - the apostasy from the Lord
Jesus Christ; 2. To unite all the Holy Churches of Christ against the coming
antichristian onslaught under a single Head - Christ the Life-Giver, and under
a single protection - His Most Pure Mother; 3. to deliver to a final curse the
whole of Masonry, Freemasonry, Illuminatism, Jacobinism and all similar parties,
under whatever names they may appear, the leaders of whom have only one aim:
under the pretext of complete egalitarian earthly prosperity, and with the aid
of people who have been made fanatical by them, to create anarchy in all states
and to destroy Christianity throughout the world, and, finally, by the power of
gold concentrated in their hands, to subdue the whole world to antichristianity
in the person of a single autocratic, God-fighting tsar - one king over the
whole world...
"The Slavs are beloved of God because
they will preserve true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to the end. They will
completely reject the Antichrist and will not accept him as the Messiah, for
which they will be counted worthy of great blessings by God. They will be the first
and most powerful people on the earth, and there will be no more powerful state
than the Russian-Slavic in the world..."
[1] “The Enlightenment was not a
crusade, “ writes Mark Goldie, “but a tone of voice, a sensibility”
(“Priesthood and the Birth of Whiggism”, quoted in Roy Porter, Enlightenment,
London: Penguin, 2000, p. xxi).
[2] Norman Davies, Europe, London:
Pimlico, 1997, p. 625.
[3] Quoted in Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, New York: Perennial, 2000, p. 322.
[4] Temperley, “The Age of Walpole and the Pelhams”, The Cambridge Modern History, Cambridge University Press, 1934, vol. VI: The Eighteenth Century, pp. 76, 77.
[5] Porter, op. cit., p. 3.
[6] Barzun, op. cit., p. 361.
[7] F.F. Willert, “Philosophy and the Revolution”, The Cambridge Modern History, Cambridge University Press, vol. VIII: The French Revolution, 1934, pp. 2-3.
[8] Pope, “Epitaph: Intended for Sir Isaac Newton” (1730).
[9] Porter, Enlightenment, London: Penguin books, 2000, pp. 135-136, 137, 138, 142.
[10] Sherrard, The Rape of Man and Nature, Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1987, p. 69.
[11] Whichcote, quoted in Porter, op. cit., p. 99.
[12] Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, book IV, chapter 19.
[13] Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, London: Fontana Press, 1995, pp. 27-28.
[14] Porter, op. cit., p. 62.
[15] Porter, op. cit., p. 100.
[16] Cited in Henry Bettenson and Christ Maunder, Documents of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, third edition, 1999, p. 345.
[17] Quoted in Stephen J. Lee, Aspects of European History, 1494-1789, London & New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 252.
[18] Porter, op. cit., p. 100.
[19] Porter, “Architects of Happiness”, BBC History Magazine, vol. 1, no. 8, December, 2000, pp. 15-16.
[20] Pope, An Essay on Man, ii, 1.
[21] Berlin, “The Philosophers of the Enlightenment”, in The Power of Ideas, op. cit., p. 40.
[22] Porter, The Enlightenment, pp. 31,32.
[23] Isaiah Berlin, “My Intellectual Path”, in The Power of Ideas, London: Chatto & Windus, 2000, p. 4.
[24] Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970, pp. 235-236.
[25] Cragg, op. cit., p. 239.
[26] Cragg, op. cit., p. 237.
[27] Lee, op. cit., p. 253.
[28] Lee, op. cit., p. 253.
[29] Quoted in Barzun, op. cit., p. 368.
[30] Barzun, op. cit., pp. 364-365.
[31] Cragg, op. cit., p. 245.
[32] Azkoul, Anti-Christianity and the New Atheism, Montreal: Monastery Press, 1984, p. 26.
[33] See I.R. Shafarevich, Sotsializm kak yavlenie mirovoj istorii, Paris: YMCA Press, 1977, pp. 194-204 (in Russian).
[34] This refers to their toleration of the cult of ancestors during their missionary work in China. The Pope eventually banned this toleration, which led to the collapse of the mission. (V.M.)
[35] Norman Davies, Europe, London: Pimlico, 1997, pp. 593-594.
[36] Robert Massie, Peter the Great, London: Phoenix, 2001, p. 314.
[37] William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 314.
[37] William Doyle, op. cit., p. 197.
[38] And in Portugal, where “John V (r. 1706-50), known as ‘The Faithful’, was a priest-king, one of whose sons by an abbess became Inquisitor-General” (Stone, op. cit., p. 638).
[39] Quoted in Davies, op. cit., p. 648. He also gave refuge to Rousseau.
[40] Eric Hobsbawn, The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848, London: Abacus, 1977, p. 36.
[41] Porter, op. cit., pp. 26-27.
[42] Porter, op. cit., p. 29.
[43] Cragg, op. cit., p. 218.
[44] Diderot, Refutation of Helvétius, ed. Garnier, p. 610 (in French).
[45] Hieromonk Makarios, The Synaxarion, Ormylia (Chalkidike), 1998, October 21, pp. 450-454.
[46] Davies, op. cit., p. 672.
[47] Fr. Daniel Rogich, Serbian Patericon: Saints of the Serbian Orthodox Church, volume I, Forestville, CA: St. Paisius Abbey Press, 1994, pp. 150-152.
[48] Quoted in Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, New York: Image Books, 1964, volume 5, part II, p. 74.
[49] Copleston, op. cit., p. 106.
[50] Copleston, op. cit., p. 88.
[51] Russell, op. cit., p. 693.
[52] Copleston, op. cit., p. 92.
[53] Russell, op. cit., p. 697.
[54] Russell, op. cit.., p. 697.
[55] Copleston, op. cit., p. 112.
[56] Copleston, op. cit., p. 113.
[57] Skidelsky, “England’s doubt”, Prospect, July, 1999, p. 34.
[58] Copleston, op. cit., p. 130.
[59] Copleston, op. cit., p. 123.
[60] Porter, op. cit., p. 178.
[61] Burt, The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, pp. 593-594; in Rose, op. cit., p. 319.
[62] Russell, op. cit., p. 685.
[63] Copleston, op. cit., p. 148.
[64] Copleston, op. cit., p. 147.
[65] Copleston, op. cit., p. 149.
[66] Copleston, op. cit., pp. 150-151.
[67] Copleston, op. cit., pp. 151-153.
[68] Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, XVII.
[69] Kant, Opus Postumum, XXI.
[70] Berlin, “The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, pp. 561-564.
[71] Benita Eisler, Byron, London: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 13.
[72] Berlin, “The Apotheosis of the Romantic Will”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, op. cit. p. 566.
[73] Hume would have agreed with this, which shows how close the extreme rationalists and the anti-rationalists could be. See the next paragraph.
[74] Berlin, “The Counter-Enlightenment”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, p. 248-
[75] Berlin, “The Counter-Enlightenment”, op. cit., pp. 253-254.
[76] Herder, in Berlin, “Herder and the Enlightenment”, in The Proper Study of Man, London: Pimlico, 1998, p. 405.
[77] Herder, in Berlin, “Herder and the Enlightenment”, op. cit., p. 388.
[78] Herder, in Berlin, “Herder and the Enlightenment”, op. cit., p. 429.
[79] Rousseau, J.J. The Social Contract, book I, introduction; in The Social Contract and Discourses, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993, p. 181.
[80] Barzun, op. cit., p. 384.
[81] Rousseau, op. cit., I, introduction; p. 181.
[82] Rousseau, op. cit., I, 2, p. 182.
[83] Rousseau has another, more facetious argument against Filmer: “I have said nothing of King Adam, or Emperor Noah, father of the three great monarchs who shared out the universe, like the children of Saturn, whom some scholars have recognized in them. I trust to getting thanks for my moderation; for, being a direct descendant of one of these princes, perhaps of the eldest branch, how do I know that a verification of titles might not leave me the legitimate king of the human race? In any case, there can be no doubt that Adam was sovereign of the world, as Robinson Crusoe was of his island, as long as he was its only inhabitant; and this empire had the advantage that the monarch, safe on his throne, had no rebellions, wars, or conspirators to fear” (op. cit., I, 2, pp. 183-184).
[84] Rousseau, op. cit., I, 3, 4; pp. 184, 185.
[85] By contrast, the French Prime Minister after the Restoration, François Guizot, placed “the great tranquillity” at the core of his vision of the good society. See George L. Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988, p. 144.
[86] Rousseau, op. cit., I, 4; pp. 186, 189.
[87] Hampson, The First European Revolution, 1776-1815, London: Thames & Hudson, 1969, pp. 181, 32.
[88] Quoted in Hampson, op. cit., pp. 32, 34.
[89] Rousseau, op. cit., I, 1; p. 181.
[90] Young, The Great Divide, Richfield Springs, N.Y.: Nikodemos, 1989, p. 21.
[91] Rousseau, op. cit., III, 15; p.
266.
[92] Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 22-23.
[93] Rousseau, op. cit., I, 6, p. 191.
[94] Rousseau, op. cit., 3, p. 203.
[95] Rousseau, op. cit., II, 3, p. 203.
[96] Russell, op. cit., p. 725.
[97] Rousseau, op. cit., II, 3, pp.
203-204.
[98] David Helm, Models of Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987, p. 78.
[99] Rousseau, op. cit., I, 6; pp. 191-192.
[100] Rousseau, op. cit., I, 7; p. 195.
[101] Russell, op. cit., p. 717.
[102] Barzun, op. cit., p. 387.
[103] Tikhomirov, “Demokratiya liberal’naya i sotsial’naya”, in Kritika Demokratii, Moscow: Moskva, 1997, pp. 116-119, 165-170 (in Russian).
[104] Locke, Second Treatise on Government, 57.
[105] Locke, op. cit., 57.
[106] Locke, op. cit., 63.
[107] Rousseau, Letters written from the Mountain, 1764, Oeuvres, vol. III, ed. Gallimard, p. 841 (in French).
[108] “All his life,” writes Berlin’s biographer, Michael Ignatieff, “he attributed to Englishness nearly all the propositional content of his liberalism: ‘that decent respect for others and the toleration of dissent is better than pride and a sense of national mission; that liberty may be incompatible with, and better than, too much efficiency; that pluralism and untidiness are, to those who value freedom, better than the rigorous imposition of all-embracing systems, no matter how rational and disinterested, better than the rule of majorities against which there is no appeal’. All of this, he insisted, was ‘deeply and uniquely English’ (A Life of Isaiah Berlin, p. 36).
[109] Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958, pp. 7-11.
[110] Indeed, it is arguable that in the Prussia of Frederick the Great or in the Austria of Josef II, men of imagination, originality, and creative genius, and, indeed, minorities of all kinds, were less persecuted and felt the pressure, both of institutions and customs, less heavy upon them than in many an earlier or later democracy. (Berlin’s note)
[111] Berlin, Two Concepts, op. cit., pp. 14-16.
[112] Berlin, op. cit., pp. 17-19.
[113] Tikhomirov, “K voprosu o masonakh”, Khristianstvo i Politika, op. cit., pp. 330-331.
[114] Tikhomirov, “V chem nasha opasnost?”, Khristianstvo i Politika, op. cit., p. 333.
[115] Tikhomirov, “Bor’ba s masonstvom”, Khristianstvo i Politika, op. cit., p. 336.
[116] Read, The Templars, London: Phoenix Press, 2001, pp. 303-304.
[117] Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, p. 22; G. Toppin, “Starred First”, Oxford Today, vol. 12, no. 1, Michaelmas term, 1999, pp. 32-34.
[118] Ridley, op. cit., p. 32.
[119] Ridley, op. cit., p. 40.
[120] Ridley, op. cit., p. 41.
[121] Ridley, op. cit., p. 41.
[122] V.F. Ivanov, Russkaya Intelligentisya i Masonstvo: ot Petra I do nashikh dnej, Harbin, 1934, Moscow: “Moskva”, 1997, p. 67 (in Russian).
[123] Ridley, op. cit., p. 40.
[124] Palmer, A Compendious Ecclesiastical History, New York: Stanford & Swords, 1850, p. 165.
[125] Quoted in Webster, op. cit., p. 129.
[126] Vicomte Léon de Poncins, Freemasonry and the Vatican, London: Britons Publishing Company, 1968, p. 116.
[127] Ridley, op. cit., p. 263.
[128] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 64.
[129] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 82.
[130] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 83.
[131] De Poncins, op. cit., p. 31.
[132] De Poncins, op. cit., p. 32.
[133] De Poncins, op. cit., pp. 49-50.
[134] Lazare, Antisemitisme, pp.
308-309; De Poncins, op. cit., pp. 71-72.
[135] La Vérité Israélite, 1861, vol. 5, p. 74; De Poncins, op.
cit., pp. 75-76.
[136] G. Batault, Le Problème juif;
quoted in de Poncins, op. cit., pp. 77-78.
[137] On Rosicrucianism as a separate order with Masonry, see Platonov, op. cit., chapter 21. It was founded in 1757 in Frankfurt-on-Main and counted among its leading adepts the charlatans Johann Welner, Saint-Germain and Caliostro.
[138] Hannah, Darkness Visible, London: Augustine Press, 1952, p. 203.
[139] H.T. F. Rhodes, The Satanic Mass, London: Jarrolds, 1968, p. 219-220.
[140] See James Payne, The Christian and Freemasonry, London: Sovereign Grace Advent Testimony, pp. 17-26.
[141] The Royal Arch degree, which contains the name Jah-Bul-On, was introduced into Masonry in about 1750. As Ridley writes: “In the admission ceremony to the Royal Arch, the initiate is told the name of God, the Great Architect of the Universe. This is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Freemasons. In recent years they have published many of the secrets that they have guarded for centuries, but not the name of God, which is revealed to the members of the Royal Arch. Renegades from Freemasonry have published it, and it is now generally know that the name is Jahbulon, with the ‘Jah’ standing for Jehovah, the ‘Bul’ for Baal, and the ‘On’ for Osiris.
“The anti-masons have made great play with the masons’ worship of
Jahbulon. The Egyptian God, Osiris, might be acceptable [!], but the masons’
worship of Baal outrages them. The bishops of the Church of England who have
become Freemasons are asked to explain how they can reconcile their Christian
beliefs with a worship of Baal, who is regarded in the Bible as absolute evil;
and these bishops have been very embarrassed by the question…” (Op. cit., pp. 70-71).
[142] De Poncins, op. cit., p. 73.
[143] Pike, in A.C. de la Rive, La Femme et
l’Enfant dans la Franc-Maçonnerie Universelle, p. 588, and De
Poncins, op. cit., p. 6.
[144] Tikhomirov, “V chem nasha opasnost’”, Khristianstvo i Politika, op. cit., p. 333.
[145] Tikhomirov, “Bor’ba s masonstvom”, Khristianstvo i Politika, op. cit., p. 336.
[146] Ridley, op. cit., p. 91.
[147] Ridley, op. cit., pp. 108-109.
[148] Ridley, op. cit., p. 100.
[149] Ridley, op. cit., p. 161.
[150] Barzun, op. cit., p. 397.
[151] Thus Sir Winston
Churchill wrote: “Vast territories had fallen to the Crown on the conclusion of
the Seven Years War. From the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico the entire
hinterland of the American colonies became British soil, and the parcelling out
of these new lands led to further trouble with the colonists. Many of them,
like George Washington, had formed companies to buy these frontier tracts from
the Indians, but a royal proclamation restrained any purchasing and prohibited
their settlement. Washington, among others, ignored the ban and wrote to his
land agent ordering him ‘to secure some of the most valuable lands in the
King’s part [on the Ohio], which I think may be accomplished after a while,
notwithstanding the proclamation that restrains it at present, and prohibits
the settling of them at all; for I can never look upon that proclamation in
any other light (but this I must say between ourselves) than as a temporary
expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians.’ (italics – WSC). This attempt
by the British government to regulate the new lands caused much discontent
among the planters, particularly in the Middle and Southern colonies.” (A
History of the English-Speaking Peoples, London: Educational Book Company,
1957, volume III, pp. 151-152):
[152] Davies, op. cit., p. 678.
[153] Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly, London: Michael Joseph, 1984, p. 166.
[154] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 38.
[155] McClelland, op. cit., pp. 354-355.
[156] Mark Almond, Revolution, London: De Agostino, 1996, p. 59.
[157] Thus Edmund Burke “considered the Americans as standing at that time and in that controversy, as England did to King James II in 1688” (Almond, op. cit., p. 63).
[158] Almond, op. cit., p. 63.
[159] Almond, op. cit., p. 69.
[160] James M. Rafferty, Prophetic Insights into the New World Order, Malo, WA: Light Bearers Ministry, 1992, p. 73.
[161] Almond, op. cit., p. 69.
[162] Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America (March, 1775); quoted in Barzun, op. cit., p. 398.
[163] Armstrong, The Battle for God, New York: Ballantine books, 2000, p. 81.
[164] Armstrong, op. cit., p. 80.
[165] Armstrong, op. cit., pp. 82-84.
[166] Armstrong, op. cit., p. 85.
[167] Isaiah Berlin, “Nationalism”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, p. 581. An example of toleration as a utilitarian expedient is provided by England’s attitude to Roman Catholics before the twentieth century. As Joseph Sobran writes: “For centuries England tolerated Roman Catholics, who were regarded as heretics owing their chief loyalty to a foreign power (the papacy). But Roman Catholics were also barred from public offices, universities, and other positions of influence. Toleration wasn’t considered a virtue: it was only a policy, based on the assumption that ideally there should be no Roman Catholics in England. The policy was to allow Roman Catholicism to exist (in private), while discouraging people from embracing it” (The Wanderer, July 1, 1999). In the twentieth century, however, toleration of Catholics has been seen as a positive virtue, and the only remnant of the old, utilitarian attitude is the ban on a Roman Catholic becoming king or queen of England.
[168] According to Enlightenment philosophers, “physical matter in identical circumstances would always behave in the same way: all stones dropped from a great height fall to the ground. What applied to the physical world applied to the human world too. All human beings in human circumstances other than their own would act in very different ways. How human beings conducted themselves was not accidental, but the accident of birth into particular societies at particular moments in those societies’ development determined what kinds of people they would eventually turn out to be. The implications of this view were clear: if you were born in Persia, instead of France, you would have been a Muslim, not a Catholic; if you had been born poor and brought up in bad company you would probably end up a thief; if you had been born a Protestant in northern Europe, rather than a Catholic in southern Europe, then you would be tolerant and love liberty, whereas southerners tended to be intolerant and to put up with autocratic government. If what human beings were like was the necessary effect of the circumstances they were born to, then nobody had a right to be too censorious about anybody else. A certain toleration of other ways of doing things, and a certain moderation in the criticism of social and political habits, customs and institutions, seemed the natural corollary of the materialistic view of mankind” (McClelland, op. cit., p. 297).
[169] Leontiev, “Vizantizm i Slavianstvo”, in Vostok, Rossia i Slavianstvo, Moscow, 1996, p. 124 (in Russian).
[170] Rafferty, op. cit., p. 54.
Some further quotations will show what this meant for the early Americans. Thus Benjamin Franklin said: “When religion is good, it will take care of itself; when it is not able to take care of itself, and God does not see fit to take care of it, so that it has to appeal to the civil power for support, it is evident to my mind that its cause is a bad one.” (Rafferty, op. cit., p. 71).
Again, in 1786 Thomas Jefferson “drew up for Virginia a statute of religious freedom, the first ever passed by a popular assembly. It said: ‘Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry… but that all men shall be free to profess, and by arguments to maintain their opinions in matters of religion and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capability” (in De Rosa, Vicars of Christ, London: Bantam books, 1988, p. 147).
Again, in 1789 George Washington said: “Any man, conducting himself as a good citizen and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.” (Rafferty, op. cit., p. 53).
Again, in 1823 James Madison said: “Religion is not in the purview of human government. Religion is essentially distinct from civil government, and exempt from its cognizance; a connection between them is injurious to both.” (Rafferty, op. cit., p. 53).
[171] Bowman v. Secular Society, Litd. (1917) A.C. 406. Quoted in Huntingdom Cairns (ed.), The Limits of Art, Washington D.C.: Pantheon Books, 1948, p. 1353.
[172] That is why St. Photius the Great, when writing to the Emperor Basil I who had exiled him, complained most bitterly, not about his physical privations, but about his being deprived of the possibility of reading, for the reason that reading enabled people to exercise their reasoning power better and thereby come to a knowledge of the truth: “No one of the Orthodox has suffered such a thing even at the hands of the heterodox. Athanasios, who suffered much, had often been driven from see both by heretics and by pagans, but no one passed a judgement that he be deprived of his books. Eustathios, the admirable, endured the same treachery at the hands of the Arianizers, but his books were not, as in our case, taken away from him, nor from Paulos, the confessor, John, the golden-mouthed, Flavianos, the inspired; and countless others. Why, pray, should I enumerate those whom the Book of Heaven has enrolled? And why should I mention the Orthodox and most holy Patriarchs? The great Constantine exiled Eusebios, Theogonos, and along with them other heretical men for their impiety and the fickleness of their views. But he neither deprived them of their belongings nor punished them in the matter of their books. For he was ashamed to hinder from reasoning those whom he used to exile because they acted contrary to reason…” (D.S. White, Patriarch Photios of Constantinople, Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1981, pp. 161-162.).
[173] More, Utopia, op. cit., book II, pp. 119-120.
[174] Tikhomirov, “O Smysle Vojny”, in Khristianstvo i Politika, Moscow: GUP “Oblizdat”, 1999, pp. 206-207.
[175] Tikhomirov, “Gosudarstvennost’ i religia”, in Khristianstvo i Politika, op. cit., pp. 37, 38-39, 40-41, 42.
[176] Randall, The Making of the Modern Mind, pp. 381-382; quoted in Fr. Seraphim Rose, Genesis, Creation and Early Man, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Press, 2000, p. 318.
[177] Cragg, op. cit., p. 181.
[178] Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope.
[179] Tikhomirov, “Dukhovenstvo i obshchestvo v sovremennom religioznom dvizhenii”, in Khristianstvo i Politika, Moscow, 1999, pp. 30-31 (in Russian).
[180] Tikhomirov, “Dukhovenstvo i obshchestvo”, op. cit., p. 32.
[181] Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 6, part II, New York: Image Books, 1964, p. 209.
[182] Berlin, Marx, op. cit., pp.
30-31.
[183] Lewis, “’Bulverism’ or the Foundation of 20th Century Thought”, in God in the Dock, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, pp. 271-275, 276. Alvin Plantinga has recently produced a similar argument to refute Darwinism. See Jim Holt, “Divine Evolution”, Prospect, May, 2002, p. 13.
[184] See Fr. Seraphim Rose, Nihilism, Forestville, C.A.: St. Herman of Alaska Press, 1994.
[185] Gribanovsky, Besedy s sobstvennym serdtsem, Jordanville, 1998, p. 61 (in Russian).
[186] Berdyaev, “Tsarstvo Bozhiye i tsarstvo kesarya”, Put’, September, 1925, pp. 39-40 (in Russian).
[187] G. Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1979, p. 135.
[188] V.F. Ivanov, Russkaya Intelligentsia i Masonstvo: ot Petra I do nashikh dnej, Harbin, 1934, Moscow, 1997, pp. 95-96 (in Russian). Keith founded his Russian lodge in 1741-1742, and left Russia in 1747.
[189] Hosking, Russia: People & Empire, London: HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 164-165
[190] Andrezev Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988, p. 19.
[191] Janet M. Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire, 1650-1825, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 232
[192] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 110.
[193] Valishevsky, Petr Velikij, in Ivanov, op. cit., p. 120.
[194] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 137.
[195] Quoted in Fomin & Fomin, Rossiya pered vtorym prishestviyem, Sergiev Posad, 1998, volume I, p. 268 (in Russian).
[196] “The Life of our Father among the Saints Metrophanes, Bishop of Voronezh”, Living Orthodoxy, vol. XII, no. 6, November-December, 1990, p. 16.
[197] Quoted in James Cracraft, The Church Reform of Peter the Great, London: Macmillan, 1971, pp. 37, 35.
[198] Robert Massie, Peter the Great, London: Phoenix, 2001, p. 345.
[199] Fomin & Fomin, op. cit., volume I, p. 290.
[200] Bessmertny,
"Natsionalizm i Universalizm v russkom religioznom soznanii", in Na
puti k svobode sovesti, Moscow: Progress, 1989, p. 136 (in Russian).
[201] Florovsky, op. cit., p. 115.
[202] M.V. Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon, Warsaw: Synodal Press, 1931, part III, pp. 227-228 (in Russian).
[203] Cracraft, op. cit., pp. 57, 58-59.
[204] Wil van den Brecken, Holy Russia and Christian Europe, London: SCM Press, 1999, p. 176.
[205] Van den Brecken, op. cit., p. 174.
[206] Cracraft, op. cit., p. 60. It should be noted that according to some synodal canonists, notably Zaozersky, Peter’s church reforms were not that different from Byzantine practice. “Byzantium under Justinian and Russia under Peter had, according to Zaozersky, one and the same form of Church administration, ‘state-synodal’, and he gives quite a convincing basis for this view… In the thinking of Theophan Prokopovich, according to their analysis, the dominant elements were Byzantine, not Protestant, that is, the very direction of Peter’s reforms had their roots in Byzantine tradition and organically proceeded from it.” (Evgenij, “Dorevoliutsionnie kanonisty i sinodal’nij stroj”, http://webforum.land.ru/mes.php?id=4895762&fs=0&ord=0&1st=&board=12871&arhv (06/11/02).
[207] Cracraft, op. cit., p. 284.
[208] Cracraft, op. cit., p. 285.
[209] Cracroft, op. cit., pp. 154-155; Zyzykin, op. cit., part III, pp. 229-230.
[210] Dobroklonsky, Rukovodstvo po istorii Russkoj Pravoslavnoj Tserkvi, in Ivanov, op. cit., p. 132.
[211] Smolitsch, Geschichte der russischen Kirche 1700-1917, vol. I, Leiden, 1964, p. 106 (in German).
[212] Hobbes, Leviathan, I, 161; in Zyzykin, op. cit., part III, p. 237.
[213] Fomin & Fomin, op. cit.,
volume 1, p. 297.
[214] Fomin & Fomin, op. cit., volume I, p. 296.
[215] Zyzykin, op. cit., part III, p. 239.
[216] Tikhomirov, Monarkhicheskaia Gosudarstvennost’, St. Petersburg, 1992, pp. 302-303 (in Russian).
[217] Karamzin, in Ivanov, op. cit., p. 137.
[218] Van den Brecken, op. cit., pp. 168-169.
[219] Priest Timothy and Hieromonk Dionysius Alferov, O Tserkvi, pravoslavnom Tsarstve i poslednem vremeni, Moscow: “Russkaia Idea”, 1998, p. 66 (in Russian).
[220] Vladimir Rusak, Isotria Rossijskoj Tserkvi, USA, 1993, p. 266 (in Russian).
[221] Cracraft, op. cit., p. 223.
[222] “Ironically,” comments van den Bercken, “this was the same situation as that in 1589 when they had agreed with the establishment of the Moscow patriarchate” (op. cit., p. 178).
[223] However, “Christopher Hermann von Manstein found that during the Ochakov campaign in the 1730s ‘though the synod grants them a dispensation for eating flesh during the actual campaign, there are few that choose to take the benefit of it, preferring death to the sin of breaking their rule” (in Hartley, op. cit., p. 242).
[224] Fomin & Fomin, op. cit., part I, p. 294. At the Moscow council of 1666-67, it had been decreed, under pressure from Ligarides, that papists should be received, not by baptism, but by chrismation.
[225] Ware, The Orthodox Church, London: Penguin Books, 1997, p. 89.
[226] Ware, op. cit., pp. 89-90.
[227] Daniel M. Rogich, Serbian Patericon, Forestville, Ca.: St. Paisius Abbey Press, volume I, 1994, p. 141.
[228] Mansel, Constantinople, City of the World’s Desire, 1453-1924, London: Penguin Books, 1997, p. 28.
[229] Zyzykin, op. cit., part III, p.
259.
[230] Van den Bercken, op. cit., p. 176.
[231] Cracraft, op. cit., pp. 163-164.
[232] The assertion that in the presence of the Orthodox Kingdom – the Russian Empire – that terrible universal outpouring of evil which we observe today could not be complete, is not an arbitrary claim. This is witnessed to by one of the founders of the bloodiest forms of contemporary anti-theism, Soviet communism – Friedrich Engels, who wrote: “Not one revolution in Europe and in the whole world can attain final victory while the present Russian state exists” (“Karl Marx and the revolutionary movement in Russia”).
[233] Archbishop Nathaniel (Lvov), “O Petre Velikom”, Epokha, N 10, 2000, no. 1, pp. 35-36 (in Russian).
[234] A questionable assertion. But the case for it should at least be listened to. (V.M.)
[235] Tikhomirov, op. cit., pp. 295-296.
[236] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 105.
[237] A somewhat more sanguine view of Peter’s reform of the Church was adopted by Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow in the 19th century. Thus, referring to the official note of A.N. Muraviev ‘On the Condition of the Orthodox Church in Russia’, and in particular said the following in relation to the Church reform of Peter I, he wrote: “The note says that Patriarchs Joachim and Adrian resisted Peter’s transformations and were therefore unfitting for the government. It was hardly like that. Peter could have lived with them if he had not been seduced by Leibnitz’s project for colleges, including a Spiritual College, which Peter borrowed from the Protestant but which the Providence of God and the spirit of the Church turned into the Holy Synod. The note complains that the Synod remained. But in vain. It would have been good not to destroy the Patriarch and not to shake the hierarchy, but the restoration of the Patriarch would have been not very convenient; it would hardly have been more useful than the Synod. If the secular power began to weigh on the spiritual one, why would the Patriarch alone have been better able to bear up under this weight than the Synod? There was a time when there was neither Patriarch nor Synod in Russia, but only a Metropolitan. But the secular power sincerely revered the spiritual power and its canons (resolutions); and the latter had more space in which to act with zeal and inspiration. That’s the point!” (Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ 988-1988, Moscow Patriarchate, 1988, vol. I, p. 76 (in Russian)).
[238] Fr. Alexis Nikolin, Tserkov’ i Gosudarstvo, Moscow, 1997, p. 91 (in Russian).
[239] Cracraft, op. cit., pp. 27-28.
[240] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 140. See also “Smert’ Imperatora Petra I kak obrazets khristianskoj konchiny”, Svecha Pokaiania, N 1, March, 1999, pp. 6-7 (in Russian).
[241] Svecha Pokaiania, N 1, March, 1999, p. 7.
[242] Tikhomirov, op. cit., p. 300.
[243] He tried to explain that “the patriarchate is not only the oldest but also the only lawful form of government (understanding by the patriarchate the leadership of the Church by one of her bishops)” (Zyzykin, op. cit., part III, p. 263).
[244] Tikhomirov writes: “In the first decade after the establishment of the
Synod most of the Russian bishops were in prison, were defrocked, beaten with
whips, etc. I checked this from the lists of bishops in the indicated work of
Dobroklonsky. In the history of the Constantinopolitan Church after the Turkish
conquest we do not find a single period when there was such devastation wrought
among the bishops and such lack of ceremony in relation to Church property” (op.
cit., p. 300). (V.M.)
[245] Zyzykin, op. cit., part III, pp.
261-262.
[246] Bessmertny,
"Natsionalizm i Universalizm v russkom religioznom soznanii", in
Furman, D.E. and Fr. Mark (Smirnov) (eds.), Na puti k svobode sovesti,
Moscow: Progress, 1989, p. 136 (in Russian).
[247] Zyzykin, op. cit., part III, p.
263.
[248] Ambrose, in Florovsky, op. cit., pp. 128-129.
[249] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 155.
[250] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 155,
157-159.
[251] Rusak, op. cit., p. 273.
[252] Nikolin, op. cit., p. 96.
[253] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 160, 161,
162-163.
[254] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 165, 166.
[255] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 169, 170,
171-172.
[256] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 173.
[257] Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime, London: Penguin Books, second edition, 1995, pp. 132, 133.
[258] Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws; in Walicki, op. cit., p. 26.
[259] Hosking, op. cit., p. 102.
[260] Nikolin, op. cit., pp. 100, 101.
[261] She once said to Countess Dashkova: “Also strike out ‘as a beneficent Deity’ - this apotheosis does not agree with the Christian religion, and, I fear, I have no right to sanctity insofar as I have laid certain restrictions on the Church’s property” (Fomin & Fomina, op. cit., vol. I, p. 299).
[262] Isabel d Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, London: Phoenix Press, 2002, p. 114.
[263] Rusak, op. cit., pp. 275-276.
[264] L.A. Tikhomirov, Monarkhicheskaya Gosudarstvennost’, op. cit., p. 341 (in Russian).
[265] Quoted in Nadejda Gorodetzky, Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk, London: S.P.C.K., 1976, p. 127.
[266] Metropolitan Arsenius has recently been canonised by the Moscow Patriarchate.
[267] Leontiev, “Vizantinizm i Slavyanstvo”, in K. Leontiev, Vostok, Rossiya i Slavyanstvo, Moscow: “Respublika”, 1996, p. 105 (in Russian).
[268] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 182-183.
[269] Dr. Jeremias Norman, “The Orthodox Mission to the Chinese”, Orthodox Tradition, vol. XVIII, N 1, 2001, pp. 29-35.
[270] Hosking, op. cit., p. 237.
[271] David Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 74.
[272] Davies, Europe, London: Pimlico,
1997, pp. 665-666.
[273] Zamoyski, Holy Madness, London: Wedenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, pp. 25-26.
[274] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 91.
[275] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 94.
[276] Hartley, op. cit., pp. 233-235.
[277] Florovsky, op. cit., pp. 155-156.
[278] Pipes, op. cit., p. 258.
[279] Walicki, op. cit., pp. 29-31.
[280] Walicki, op. cit., p. 33.
[281] Pipes, op. cit., p. 258.
[282] Walicki, op. cit., pp. 40-42.
[283] Walicki, op. cit., p. 38.
[284] Nikolin, op. cit., p. 103.
[285] Tyutchev, Politicheskiye Stat'i, Paris: YMCA Press, 1976, p. 34 (in Russian).
[286] Gribanovsky, Besedy s sobstvennym serdtsem, Jordanville, 1998, p. 33 (in Russian).
[287] Hobsbawn, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, London: Abacus, 1992, p. 75.
[288] Quoted in Stephen J. Lee, Aspects of European History, 1494-1789, London & New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 279.
[289] Hobsbawn, op. cit., p. 79.
[290] Quoted in Foi Transmise et Sainte Tradition, N 68, January, 1993, p. 13 (in French).
[291] Quoted in M.V.
Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon, Warsaw: Synodal Press, part III, p. 238 (in
Russian).
[292] Similarly, in the Russian revolution, religion was “the opium of the people”.
[293] Burke, Remarks on the Policy of the Allies (1793), in David P. Fidler and Jennifer M. Welsh (eds.), Empire and Community: Edmund Burke’s Writings and Speeches on International Relations, Oxford: Westview Press, 1999, p. 280.
[294] In Russian: Komitet Gosudarstvennoj Besopasnosti – KGB.
[295] Norman Davies, Europe, London: Pimlico, 1997, p. 694.
[296] Quoted in Jocelyn Hunt, The French Revolution, London & New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 25-26.
[297] William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 114-115.
[298] Davies, op. cit., pp. 713-714.
[299] Rejection was probably his more constant and sincere opinion. In October, 1789 he wrote to the Spanish King, his cousin, protesting “against all the decrees contrary to royal authority to which I have been compelled by force to assent, since 15th July of this year. I beg your Majesty to keep my protest secret until its publication becomes necessary” (Mark Almond, Revolution, London: De Agostini Editions, 1996, p. 74). See also Munro Price, “Countering the Revolution”, BBC History Magazine, vol. 3, no. 7, July, 2002, pp. 18-20.
[300] The day before his attempted escape the king declared: “What remains to the King other than a vain semblance of royalty?…The King does not think it possible to govern a kingdom of such great extent and importance as France through the means established by the National Assembly… The spirit of the clubs and dominates everything… In view of all these facts, and the impossibility of the King’s being able to do the good and prevent the evil which is being committed, is it surprising that the King has sought to recover his liberty and find security for himself and his family?” (Hunt, op. cit., p. 41).
However, as Hobsbawn points out, “traditional kings who abandon their peoples lose the right to royalty" (op. cit., p. 86). In a similar situation in 1917, Tsar Nicholas II chose not to flee…
[301] Hunt, op. cit., p. 34.
[302] Doyle, op. cit, pp. 143-144, 145.
[303] Roy Porter, Enlightenment, London: Penguin books, 2000, p. 451.
[304] Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791).
[305] Berlin, “The Counter-Enlightenment”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, pp. 256-257.
[306] Scruton, Modern Philosophy,
London : Arrow Books, 1997, p. 417.
[307] Tikhomirov, “Demokratiya liberal’naya i sotsial’naya”, in Kritika Demokratia, Moscow: “Moskva”, 1997, p. 122 (in Russian).
[308] Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, quoted in Fidler & Welsh, op. cit., p. 30.
[309] Ibid., p. 30.
[310] Ibid., p. 31.
[311] Gooch, “Europe and the French Revolution”, in The Cambridge Modern History, Cambridge University Press, 1934, vol. VIII, p. 757.
[312] Doyle, op. cit., pp. 167-168.
[313] This greatly increased influence of the printed word, which has become such an important feature of the modern world, was another of Burke’s correct predictions: “What direction the French spirit of proselytism is likely to take, and in what order it is likely to prevail in the several parts of Europe, it is not easy to determine. The seeds are sown almost every where, chiefly by newspaper circulations, infinitely more efficacious and extenseive than ever they were. And they are a more important instrument than is generally imagined. They are a part of the reading of all, they are the whole of the reading of the far greater number. There are thirty of them in Paris alone. The language diffuses them more widely than the English, though the English too are much read. The writers of these papers indeed, for the greater part, are either unknown or in contempt, but they are like a battery in which the stroke of any one ball produces no great effect, but the amount of continual repetition is decisive. Let us only suffer one person to tell us his story, morning and evening, but for one twelvemonth, and he will become our master” (Thoughts on French Affairs (1791), in Fidler and Welsh, op. cit., p. 240).
[314] Paine, Rights of Man, London: Penguin Books, 1984, part I, p. 48.
[315] Paine, op. cit., pp. 41-42, 65-66.
[316] Norman Hampson, “What Difference did the French Revolution Make?” History, vol. 74, no. 241, June, 1989, p. 233.
[317] Hampson, op. cit., p. 233.
[318] In the Romantic age, “feeling” was considered higher than rational knowing.
[319] Burke, quoted in Golo Mann, The History of Germany since 1789, London: Pimlico, 1996, pp. 90-91.
[320] Paine, Rights of Man, op. cit.., p. 86.
[321] Paine, quoted in Porter, op. cit., p. 454.
[322] Paine, op. cit., p. 87.
[323] Paine, op. cit., p. 68.
[324] Paine, op. cit., p. 69.
[325] Paine, op. cit., p. 69.
[326] Adam Zamoyski, Holy Madness, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, p. 51.
[327] Doyle, op. cit., pp. 64-65.
[328] May 1, which has been adopted as International Labour Day by the Socialists, was a feast “of satanic forces – witches, sorcerers, evil spirits, demons” (O.A. Platonov, Ternovij Venets Rossii, Moscow: Rodnik, 1998, p. 194 (in Russian)). It was called “Walpurgisnacht” in Germany after the eighth-century English missionary to Germany, St. Walburga, whose feast is May 1.
[329] Nesta Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, Christian Book Club of America, 1924, p. 205. According to his second-in-command, Baron von Knigge, Weishaupt, had a “Jesuitical character” and his organisation was “such a machine behind which perhaps Jesuits may be concealed” (quoted in Webster, op. cit., p. 227). He was in fact “a Jew by race who had been baptized a Roman Catholic and had become professor of canon law at the Roman Cathlic university of Ingoldstadt in Bavaria” (Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, p. 114).
[330] Platonov, op. cit., p. 195.
[331] Platonov, op. cit., pp. 195-196.
[332] Webster, op. cit., p. 221.
[333] Webster, op. cit., p. 205.
[334] Henri Martin, Histoire de France, XVI, 533; in Webster, op. cit., p. 207.
[335] Webster, op. cit., pp. 213-217.
[336] Webster, op. cit., pp. 218-219.
[337] Ridley, op. cit., p. 115.
[338] Webster, op. cit., pp. 241-242.
[339] Webster, op. cit., pp. 244-245.
[340] Rose, Nihilism, Forestville, Ca.: Fr. Seraphim Rose Foundation, 1994, p. 54.
[341] Doyle, op. cit., p. 183.
[342] Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 75-76.
[343] Doyle, op. cit., p. 193.
[344] Hunt, op. cit., 1998, p. 37.
[345] Doyle, op. cit., p. 195.
[346] Ridley, op. cit., pp. 136-137.
[347] Eliphas Levi, in Fomin, op. cit., p. 38. Who was Jacob? There are various theories. Some think it was Jacob Molet, the leader of the Templars who was executed by the Catholic Church. Others think it refers to Masons of the Scottish rite who were supporters of the Stuart Jacobites. Others think it was a reference to the Patriarch Jacob’s “struggle with God” in Genesis 32.
[348] Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 1-2.
[349] Camus, The Rebel, New York, 1956, p. 120.
[350] Doyle, op. cit., p. 201.
[351] Doyle, op. cit., p. 199.
[352] Doyle, op. cit., p. 210.
[353] Doyle, op. cit., p. 227.
[354] Doyle, op. cit., p. 226.
[355] Doyle, op. cit., p. 242.
[356] Ridley, op. cit., p. 140.
[357] Doyle, op. cit., p. 250.
[358] Doyle, op. cit., pp. 251-252.
[359] Doyle, op. cit., p. 252.
[360] Doyle, op. cit., p. 254.
[361] Hunt, op. cit., p. 63.
[362] Doyle, op. cit., pp. 258, 259. For precise figures with breakdown according to class and sex, see Hunt, op. cit., p. 70.
[363] He said: “Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great being who watches over oppressed innocence, is altogether popular... If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” (Hunt, op. cit., p. 68).
[364] Doyle, op. cit., pp. 259-262.
[365] Doyle, op. cit., p. 263.
[366] Hunt, op. cit., p. 66.
[367] Doyle, op. cit., p. 277.
[368] Hampson, op. cit., p. 234.
[369] Hampson, op. cit., p. 235.
[370] Hampson, op. cit. p. 235.
[371] Hampson, op. cit, p. 238.
[372] Hobsbawn, op. cit., p. 80.
[373] Hobsbawn, op. cit., p. 80.
[374] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 88.
[375] For example, during the siege of Saragossa in 1808-09, 54,000 Spanish civilians were killed. A French officer later recorded one episode: “With a petard, we brought down the door of the church, which the monks were defending to the death. Behind them a mass of men, women and children had taken refuge at the foot of the altar, and were crying for mercy. But the smoke was too thick for us to distinguish the victims we would have wished to spare. We wrought havoc everywhere, and death alone stifled their cries…” (Quoted in The Economist, December 31, 1999, p. 41). The counter-revolution could be almost as brutal: on November 4, 1794 Russian troops broke into the Warsaw suburb of Praga and killed 20,000 people (Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 93).
[376] Davies, op. cit., p. 675.
[377] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 110.
[378] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 130.
[379] Although all the European colonial powers – and some African ones – were guilty of trading in slaves, “gradually in the 18th century an anti-slavery lobby built up in Europe, notably in Britain, the superpower of the seas. In 1772 Lord Mansfield, a judge, ruled that a runaway slave there could not be forced back by his master to the West Indies. The ruling was interpreted (questionably, but this was the effect) as confirming that there could be no slavery in Britain. In America, it created fears that Britain might try to abolish slavery in its colonies. The desire to maintain slavery was not the least motive for the American war of independence, in which some blacks fought on the British side. In 1807 Britain banned the slave trade, and began using its navy to stop it. But slavery itself did not end in the British Caribbean until 1838, in the United States (in practice) 1865, in Spanish-owned Cuba 1886, in Brazil 1888.” (“Guilty Parties”, The Economist, December 31, 1999, p. 90).
[380] Doyle, op. cit., p. 417.
[381] Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 109.
[382] Doyle, op. cit., p. 411.
[383] David Vital, A People Apart, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 35-36.
[384] Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, London: Phoenix, 1987, 1995, p. 306.
[385] Vital, op. cit., p. 49.
[386] Vital, op. cit., pp. 43-45.
[387] “Alsace and Lorraine, acquired by France under the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, contained the westernmost segment of Ashkenazi, Yiddish-speaking Jewry… [They] accounted for approximately half the entire Jewish population of France…All told, they formed just under 3 per cent of Alsace’s total population of 684,000… There was no disputing… that on the Eve of the Revolution one-third of all mortgages in the province were in the hands of Jews.” (Vital, op. cit., pp. 50-51, 52).
[388] General A. Nechvolodov, L’Empéreur Nicolas II et les Juifs, Paris, 1924, pp. 216-220 (in French). The Sephardic Jews of South-West France and papal Avignon, who were already more assimilated than their Ashkenazi co-religionists in Alsace, were given full citizenship in July, 1790.
[389] Doyle, op. cit., p. 411.
[390] Johnson, op. cit., pp. 306-307.
[391] Vital, op. cit., p. 101.
[392] Vital, op. cit., p. 103.
[393] Doyle, op. cit., p. 288.
[394] Doyle, op. cit., p. 324.
[395] Mansel, “Napoleon the Kingmaker”, History Today, vol. 48 (3), March, 1998, pp. 40, 41.
[396] Mansel, op. cit., p. 43.
[397] Mansel, op. cit., p. 43.
[398] Hunt, op. cit.,pp. 104, 105-106, 107, 108, 112.
[399] Doyle, op. cit., p. 419.
[400] Vincent Cronin, Napoleon, London: HarperCollins, 1994, p. 253.
[401] Quoted in Cronin, op. cit., p. 202.
[402] Quoted in Cronin, op. cit., p. 211.
[403] Doyle, op. cit., pp. 385-386.
[404] Cronin, op. cit., p. 212.
[405] Cronin, op. cit., pp. 216-217.
[406] Cronin, op. cit., p. 220.
[407] Cronin, op. cit., pp. 220-223.
[408] Cronin, op. cit., p. 221.
[409] Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, III, 20; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, V, 22; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, III, 15; Karen Armstrong, A History of Jerusalem, London: HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 194-196.
[410] Nechvolodov, op. cit., pp. 221-222.
[411] Johnson, op. cit., p. 310.
[412] Nechvolodov, op. cit., pp. 225-226.
[413] Vital, op. cit., p. 57.
[414] O.A. Platonov, Ternovij Venets Rossii, Moscow: Rodnik, 1998, p. 266 (in Russian).
[415] This did not mean, however, that the complaints of the citizens of Alsace were ignored. According to the “infamous decree” of March 17, 1808, writes Vital, “existing debts to Jews [in Alsace] were to be heavily and arbitrarily reduced. But the stipulations of the decree went a great deal further. Restrictions were to be levelled on the freedom of Jews to engage in a trade of their choice and to move from one part of the country to another without special permission. They were to submit to special commercial registration. They were not to employ the Hebrew language in their commercial transactions. Unlike all other citizens, they were to be forbidden to offer substitutes in case of conscription for military service. And the entry of foreign Jews into France was to be conditional either on military performance or on satisfaction of specified property qualifications.” (op. cit., p. 59). The decree lasted for ten years, but was not then renewed by the Restoration government.
[416] Reed, The Controversy of Zion, Durban, SA, p. 130.
[417] Platonov, op. cit., pp. 267-268.
[418] Nechvolodov, op. cit., p. 226.
[419] Vital, op. cit., p. 62.
[420] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 151.
[421] Almond, op. cit., p. 89.
[422] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 156.
[423] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 229.
[424] Almond, op. cit., p. 91.
[425] “Mixed Blessing”, The Economist, December 31, 1999, p. 68.
[426] Horton Box, The Origins of the Paraguayan War, University of Illinois, 1927.
[427] Lanes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, London: Abacus, 1999, pp. 330, 331.
[428] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 230.
[429] Barzun, op. cit., p. 491.
[430] Berlin, “The Essence of European Romanticism”, The Power of Ideas, op. cit., pp. 201-204.
[431] Berlin, “My Intellectual Path”, The Power of Ideas, op. cit., pp. 10-11.
[432] Berlin, "The Bent Twig: On the Rise of Nationalism", The Crooked Timber of Humanity. London: John Murry, p. 245.
[433] Seven centuries later, St. Boniface the English Apostle of Germany and papal legate, appears to have had similar fears, comparing the sexual vices of the English, who were part of the Roman commonwealth, with the much stricter mores of the pagan Germans (Letter 73, in Ephraim Emerton (trans.), The Letters of Saint Boniface, New York: Octagon Books, 1973, pp. 127-128).
[434] Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 162, 163-165.
[435] F.M. Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, May-June, 1877, chapter III, 1; Haslemere: Ianmead, 1984, pp. 727, 728-730.
[436] Johnson, The Birth of the Modern, World Society 11815-1830, London: Phoenix, 1992, pp. 810-811.
[437] Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 166, 167-168, 169-170.
[438] George L. Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe, Boulder & London: Westview Press, 1988, p. 68.
[439] Mosse, op. cit., p. 83.
[440] Mazzini, in Michael Biddiss, “Nationalism and the Moulding of Modern Europe”, History, 79, N 257, October, 1994, p. 412.
[441] Aksakov, in E.I. Annenkova, “’Slavyano-Khristianskie’ ideally na fone zapadnoj tsivilizatsii. Russkie spory 1840-1850-x gg.”, Kotelnikov, V.A. (ed.), Khristianstvo i Russkaia Literatura, St. Petersburg, 1996,p. 129 (in Russian).
[442] Mann, The History of Germany
since 1789, London: Pimlico, 1996, p. 35.
[443] Davies, Europe, London: Pimlico,
1997, pp. 762-763.
[444] Hence Tom
Paine’s declaration: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good” (The
Age of Reason (1793)).
[445] Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, London: Abacus, 1992, pp. 116-117.
[446] Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, London: Phoenix, 1991, p. 662.
[447] Johnson, op. cit., pp. 665-666.
[448] In Spain, for example, the left-wing and Masonic Isabelinos “were supported by Palmerston and by the British Legion of volunteers from Britain… They were also supported by the government of Louis Philippe [of France]. Metternich and Tsar Nicholas were not in a position to help the Carlists” (Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, London: Constable, 1999, p. 200).
[449] Johnson, op. cit., p. 691.
[450] Hobsbawm, op. cit., p. 129.
[451] Ultra-conservative, and yet a Freemason since 1778 (Ridley, op. cit., p. 110).
[452] Berlin, “The Counter-Enlightenment”, in The Proper Study of Mankind, London: Pimlico, 1998, pp. 264-268.
[453] Metropolitan Philaret, “Rassuzhdenie o nrastvennykh prichinakh neimovernykh uspekhov nashikh v nastoiaschej vojne”, Filareta Mitropolita Moskovskogo i Kolomenskogo Tvorenia, Moscow, 1994, p. 314 (in Russian).
[454] “Ikonosphera russkoj kultury”, Vestnik
RKhD, NN 162-163, 1991, p. 45 (in Russian).
[455] St. John Maximovich, Proiskhozhdenie Zakona o Prestolonasledovanii v Rossii, Shanghai, 1936, Podolsk, 1994; quoted in “Svyatoj Tsar-Muchenik Pavel”, Svecha Pokayania, N 4, February, 2000, p. 18 (in Russian).
[456] Tsar Paul, in V.F. Ivanov, Russkaia Intelligentsia I Masonstvo: ot Petra I do nashikh dnej, Harbin, 1934, Moscow, 1997, p. 211 (in Russian).
[457] Tsar Paul also increased the lands of hierarchical houses and the pay of the parish clergy, freed the clergy from physical punishment for crimes, and from being pressed into army service. The power of bishops was extended to all Church institutions and to all diocesan servers. (Fr. Alexis Nikolin, Tserkov’ i Gosudarstvo, Moscow, 1997, p. 106 (in Russian).)
[458] When Napoleon threatened Malta, Tsar Paul joined the British in renewing the coalition against him that had collapsed after his victories in Italy.
[459] “Svyatoj Tsar-Muchenik Pavel”, Svecha Pokayania, N 4, February, 2000, pp. 18-20 (in Russian).
[460] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 211.
[461] “Monk Abel ‘the Prophet’ of Valaam”, The Orthodox Word, vol. 36, no. 1 (210), January-February, 2000, p. 40). For a detailed account of the plot against Tsar Paul, his premonitions and his death, see Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 230-242.
[462] “Svyatoj Tsar-Muchenik Pavel”, Svecha Pokayania, N 4, February, 2000, pp. 18-20 (in Russian).
[463] Nikolin, op. cit., p. 106.
[464] Ioseliani, A Short History of the Georgian Church, Jordanville, 1983, pp. 190-193.
[465] Glazkov, “K voprosu o edinoverii v svyazi s ego dvukhsotletiem”, Pravoslavnij Put’, 2000, pp. 74-75, 76-77.
[466] Zamoyski, , Holy Madness, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999, p. 199.
[467] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 201.
[468] Dan Cohn-Serbok, Atlas of Jewish History, London and New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 121.
[469] Hieromonk Patapios, “A Traditionalist Critique of ‘The Orthodox Church’”, Orthodox Tradition, volume XVI, no. 1, 1999, pp. 44-45.
[470] L.A. Tikhomirov, “Yevrei i Rossiya”, Kritika Demokratii, Moscow, 1997, p. 487 (in Russian).
[471] “Rejecting mercantilist arguments favouring the admission of ‘useful’ Jews to her lands, the Tsarina [Elizabeth] declared… that she wished to derive no profit from ‘the enemies of Christ’” (Vital, A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 82). According to non-Russian sources, Elizabeth expelled 30,000 Jews from Russia (O. Platonov, Ternovij Venets Rossii, Moscow, 1998, p. 235 (in Russian)).
[472] Martin Gilbert, however, gives a figure of one million (The Dent Atlas of Russian History, London: Dent, 1993, p. 42). Platonov (op. cit., p. 237) writes that as a result of the three partitions of Poland and the annexation of New Russia, “the number of Jews in Russia at least doubled. As the worried Catherine II wrote: “what seemed a child’s game is becoming a most serious matter. The Russian state has bumped into the most numerous Jewish masses in Europe”.
[473] Janet M. Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire, 1650-1825, London and New York: Longman, 1999, p. 15.
[474] Platonov, op. cit., p. 241.
[475] Vital, op. cit., pp. 18-19.
[476] Vital, op. cit., p. 76.
[477] Vital, op. cit., pp. 84-85.
[478] In 1800, I.G. Friesel, governor of Vilna, reported: “Having established their own administrative institution, called Synagogues, Kahals, or associations, the Jews completely separated themselves from the people and government of the land. As a result, they were exempt from the operation of the statutes which governed the peoples of the several estates, and even if special laws were enacted, these remained unenforced and valueless, because the ecclesiastical and temporal leaders of the Jews invariably resisted them and were clever enough to find means to evade them.” (Isaac Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, 1772-1844, New York, 1970, p. 29; quoted in Hartley, op. cit., pp. 98-99).
[479] Platonov, op. cit., pp. 242, 243-245.
[480] The kahal was abolished in 1821 in Poland and in 1844 in the rest of the Russian empire.
[481] Vital, op. cit., pp. 95-96.
[482] Cronin, Napoleon, London: HarperCollins, 1994, p. 315.
[483] Vital, op. cit., p. 105.
[484] Vladimir Gubanov (ed.), Nikolai II-ij i novie mucheniki, St. Petersburg, 2000, p. 698 (in Russian). Gubanov took this figure from the Jewish Encyclopaedia.
[485] Vital, op. cit., pp. 86-87.
[486] Platonov, op. cit., p. 245.
[487] Shabelsky-Bork, in Fomin S., Rossia pered Vtorym Prishestviem, Sergiev Posad, 1993, p. 121 (in Russian).
[488] Alexander had once said to his tutor {La Harpe, a Swiss republican}: “Once… my turn comes, then it will be necessary to work, gradually of course, to create a representative assembly of the nation which, thus directed, will establish a free constitution, after which my authority will cease absolutely” (in Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire 1552-1917, London: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 123).
[489] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 246.
[490] L.A. Tikhomirov, Monarkhicheskaia Gosudarstvennost’, St. Petersburg, 1992, p. 343 (in Russian).
[491] Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988, p. 73.
[492] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 247.
[493] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 249.
[494] Professor Theodore Shiman, Alexander I, Moscow, 1908.
[495] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 255-258.
[496] Papmehl, Metropolitan Platon of Mosow (Petr Levshin, 1737-1812): The Enlightened Prelate, Scholar and Educator, Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1983, p. 85.
[497] Debidour, Histoire des rapports de l’église et de l’état en France, p. 255; in M.V. Zyzykin, Patriarkh Nikon, Warsaw Synodal Press, 1931, part III, p. 251 (in Russian).
[498] Leontiev, “Vizantizm i Slavyanstvo”, in Vostok, Rossiya i Slavyanstvo, Moscow, 1996, p. 104 (in Russian).
[499] That same icon which was to reappear miraculously on March 2, 1917, at another time of mortal danger for the State
[500] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 260.
[501] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 261.
[502] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 262.
[503] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 264-265.
[504] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 269-270.
[505] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 272.
[506] Vladimir Rusak, Istoria Rossijskoj Tserkvi, 1993, p. 279 (in Russian).
[507] Bishop Theophan, Mysli na kazhdij den’, p. 461; quoted in Archbishop Averky, Provozvestnik kary Bozhiej russkomu narodu, Jordanville, 1964, p. 20 (in Russian).
[508] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 172.
[509] Hosking, op. cit., p. 137.
[510] Zamoyski, op. cit., pp. 172-173.
[511] Elagin, “The Life of Countess Anna Orlova-Chesmenskaya”, The Orthodox Word, 1977, vol. 13, no. 6 (77), pp. 240-241.
[512] Zhmakin, “Eres’ esaula Kotel’nikova”, Khristianskoe Chtenie, November-December, 1882, pp. 739-745 (in Russian).
[513] Fr. George Florovsky, The Ways of Russian Theology, Belmont: Nordland, 1979, part I, pp. 202-203.
[514] Thus Archimandrite (later Metropolitan) Philaret (Drozdov) wrote in his Conversations between one testing and one convinced of the Orthodoxy of the Greco-Russian Church (1815) wrote: “Insofar as the one [the Eastern Church] and the other [the Western Church] confess Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh, in this respect they have a common Spirit, which ‘is of God’… Know that, holding to the above-quoted words of Holy Scripture, I do not dare to call any Church which believes ‘that Jesus is the Christ’ false” (Philareta Mitropolita Moskovskogo i Kolomenskogo Tvorenia, Moscow, 1994, pp. 402, 408 (in Russian). However, in defence of the holy metropolitan, it should be pointed out that in all dogmatic questions he remained loyal to the teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Church, that he never served with heterodox hierarchs or sought union with the heterodox churches. Thus he cannot really be compared with the ecumenist “Orthodox” of modern times.
[515] Ivanov, op. cit., p. 278.
[516] I.A. Chistovich, The History of the Translation of the Bible into the Russian Language, St. Petersburg, 1873, pp. 50-55.
[517] O.A. Platonov, Ternovij Venets Rossii, Moscow: “Rodnik”, 1998, pp. 262-263 (in Russian).
[518] Rusak, op. cit., p. 279.
[519] Elagin, op. cit., p. 243.
[520] Ivanov, op. cit., pp. 280-283.
[521] See Tainstvennij Starets Feodor Koz’mich v Sibiri i Imperator Aleksandr I, Kharkov, 1912, Jordanville, 1972 (in Russian). Several years ago, Japanese graphological experts compared the handwriting of Emperor Alexander I and Elder Fyodor Kuzmich, and spoke of the “very significant resemblance in their handwriting” (Nikolin, op. cit., p. 113).
[522] Elagin, op. cit., p. 244.
[523] Anzulovic, Heavenly Serbia, London and New York: New York University Press, 1999, p. 25.
[524] Anzulovic, op. cit., p. 42. Friendly relations between Serbian Orthodox hierarchs and Turkish rulers continued well into the 19th century. Thus Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic tells the following story: “In the first half of the last [19th] century, Jeladin Bey ruled over Ochrid. He was a rebel against the Sultan and an independent governor. At that time the Church was ruled by Metropolitan Kalinik. Jeladin and Kalinik, although of different faiths, were very good friends and often visited each other. It happened that Jeladin Bey condemned twenty-five Christians to death by hanging, and the execution was to take place on Great Friday. The Metropolitan, deeply distressed by this event, went to Jeladin and besought him to mitigate the sentence. While they were talking, the hour of the mid-day meal arrived, and the Bey invited the Metropolitan to eat with him. A dish of lamb had been prepared for the meal. The Metropolitan excused himself, as the fast prevented him from remaining to eat, and prepared to leave. The Bey was angered and said to him: ‘Choose; either you eat with me and free twenty-five people from hanging, or you refrain and they hang.’ The Metropolitan crossed himself and sat down to lunch, and Jeladin freed the people from the death sentence.” (The Prologue from Ochrid, Birmingham: Lazarica Press, 1985, part I, January 27, p. 104)
[525] Adrian Fortescue, The Orthodox Eastern Church, London:
Catholic Truth Society, 1920, p. 308. Originally, the Karlovtsy metropolitanate
had jurisdiction over the Romanians of Hungarian Transylvania. However, in 1864
the authorities allowed the creation of a separate Romanian Church in Hungary,
the metropolitanate of Hermannstadt (Nagy-Szeben) (Fortescue, op. cit.,
p. 316). From 1873 there was also a metropolitanate of Cernovtsy with
jurisdiction over all the Orthodox (mainly Serbs and Romanians) in the Austrian
lands (Fortescue, op. cit., pp. 323-325).
Significantly, when the Russian Church in Exile sought refuge in Serbia in the 1920s, their administration was set up in the former capital of the Serbian Church’s exile, Karlovtsy.
[526] Judah, The Serbs, London: Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 51-52, 52-54.
[527] Anzulovic, op. cit., p. 74.
[528] Fortescue, op. cit., p. 309.
[529] Quotations in Anzulovic, op. cit., pp. 51-52, 55.
[530] Velimirovic, Religija Njegoševa, p. 166, quoted in
Anzulovic, op. cit., p. 55.
[531] Zamoyski, op. cit., p. 318.
[532] Benjamin, Stoikheia tis Metaphysikis, 1820; in Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 33.
[533] Clogg, op. cit., pp. 27-28.
[534] Michael Binyon writes: “A letter from Alexander I, signed by Capo d’Istrias, … denounced Yspilanti’s actions as ‘shameful and criminal’, upbraided him for misusing the tsar’s name, struck him from the Russian army list, and called him to lay down his arms immediately” (Pushkin, London: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 133). By a strange irony, the officer sent by the Russian government to report on the insurrection was Pestel, the future leader of the Decembrist rebellion (op. cit., p. 134).
[535] Clogg, op. cit., p. 35, footnote.
[536] Frazee, The
Orthodox Church and Independent Greece 1821-1853, Cambridge University
Press, 1969, p. 8. On St. Gregory, see New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke, op.
cit., pp. 146-157; Orthodox Life, 1978, no. 2, pp. 3-26.
[537] St. Gregory, An Explanation of the Apostolic Lections, translated in Orthodox Christian Witness, April 26 / May 9, 1999, pp. 6-7.
[538] St. Gregory, op.
cit., p. 48.
[539] Frazee, op. cit., chs. 7 and 8. On this period of Greek Church history, see the series of articles being published in Agios Agathangelos Esfigmenites under the title "To atheon dogma tou oikoumenismou Prodromos tou Antikhristou" (in Greek).
[540] Walicki, op. cit., pp. 58, 59, 60.
[541] Walicki, op. cit., p. 61.
[542] Walicki, op. cit., p. 67.
[543] Walicki, op. cit., pp. 62-63.
[544] Benita Eisler, Byron, London: Penguin books, 1999, p. 753.
[545] Platonov, op. cit., p. 265.
[546] Platonov, op. cit., p. 342.
[547] Yury Druzhnikov, “O Poetakh i Okkupantakh”, Russkaia Mysl’, N 4353, February 15-21, 2001, p. 8 (in Russian).
[548] Yu.K. Begunov, A.D. Stepanov, K.Yu. Dushenov (eds.), Tajna Bezzakonia, St. Petersburg, 2000, pp. 61-64 (in Russian).
[549] St. Seraphim, quoted by Protopriest Victor Potapov, "God is betrayed by silence" (in Russian). See also Literaturnaya Ucheba, January-February, 1991, pp. 131-134 (in Russian).