prostrate in the dust, and at the holy icon - and then I too saw the animated features of the Mother of God, and I saw how she looked with love and mercy at these simple folk, and I sank on my knees and meekly prayed to her.7
Icons came to Russia from Byzantium in the tenth century, and for the first two hundred years or so they were dominated by the Greek style. But the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century cut off Russia from Byzantium; and the monasteries, which were largely left alone and even flourished at this time, began to develop their own style. The Russian icon came to be distinguished by qualities that guided the worshipper at prayer: a simple harmony of line and colour and a captivating use of ‘inverse perspective’ (where lines seem to converge on a point in front of the picture) to draw the viewer into the picture
space and to symbolize the fact, in the words of Russia’s greatest icon scholar Leonid Ouspensky, that ‘the action taking place before our eyes is outside the laws of earthly existence’.8 That style reached its supreme heights in Andrei Rublev’s icons of the early fifteenth century - an era coinciding with Russia’s triumph over Tatar rule, so that this flowering of sacred art became a cherished part of national identity. Rublev’s icons came to represent the nation’s spiritual unity. What defined the Russians - at this crucial moment when they were without a state - was their Christianity. Readers may recall the last, symbolic scene of Andrei Tar-kovsky’s film about the icon painter,
It is hard to overstress the importance of the fact that Russia received its Christianity from Byzantium and not from the West. It was in the spirit of the Byzantine tradition that the Russian Empire came to see itself as a theocracy, a truly Christian realm where Church and state were united. The god-like status of the Tsar was a legacy of this tradition.9 After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, the Russian Church proclaimed Moscow to be the Third Rome - the direct heir to Byzantium and the last remaining seat of the Orthodox religion, with a messianic role to save the Christian world. This Byzantine inheritance was strengthened by the marriage of Ivan III to Sofia Paleologue, the niece of Byzantium’s last Emperor, Constantine, in 1472. The ruling princes of Muscovy adopted the title ‘Tsar’ and invented for themselves a legendary descent from the Byzantine and Roman emperors. ‘Holy Russia’ thus emerged as the providential land of salvation - a messianic consciousness that became reinforced by its isolation from the West.
With Byzantium’s decline, Russia was cut off from the mainstream of Christian civilization and, by the end of the fifteenth century, it was the only major kingdom still espousing Eastern Christianity. As a consequence, the Russian Church grew introspective and withdrawn, more intolerant of other faiths, and more protective of its national rituals. It became a state and national Church. Culturally the roots of this went deep into the history of Byzantium itself. Unlike the Western Church, Byzantium had no papacy to give it supranational cohesion.
It had no lingua franca like Latin - the Russian clergy, for example, being mostly ignorant of Greek - and it was unable to impose a common liturgy or canon law. So from the start the Orthodox community was inclined to break down into independent Churches along national lines (Greek, Russian, Serbian, etc.) - with the result that religion reinforced, and often became synonymous with, national iden-tity. To say ‘Russian’ was to say ‘Orthodox’.
The rituals of the Church were the basis of these national differences. There was one essential doctrine - set long ago by the Church Fathers - but each national Church had its own tradition of rituals as a community of worshippers. For the Western reader, accustomed to conceive of religious differences in terms of doctrine and moral atti-tudes, it may be difficult to understand how rituals can define a national group. But rituals are essential to the Orthodox religion - indeed, the very meaning of the concept ‘Orthodox’ is rooted in the idea of the ‘correct rituals’. This explains why Orthodoxy is so fundamentally conservative - for purity of ritual is a matter of the utmost importance to the Church - and why indeed its dissenting movements have generally opposed any innovations in the liturgy, the Old Believers being the most obvious case in point.
The whole of Russian life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was permeated with religious rituals. At birth the Russian child would be baptized and given a saint’s name. The annual celebration of a person’s saint’s day was even more important than that of their birth-day. Every major event in a Russian’s life - entry into school and university, joining the army or civil service, purchasing an estate or house, marriage and death - received some form of blessing from a priest. Russia had more religious holidays than any other Christian country. But no other Church was so hard on the stomach. There were five weeks of fasting during May and June, two weeks in August, six weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, and seven weeks during Lent. The Lenten fast, which was the one fast kept by all classes of society, began after Shrovetide, the most colourful of the Russian holidays, when everybody gorged themselves on pancakes and went for sleigh rides or tobogganing. Anna Lelong, who grew up on a medium-sized estate in Riazan province in the 1840s, recalled the Shrovetide holiday as a moment of communion between lord and serf.
At around 2 p.m. on the Sunday of Shrovetide, horses would be harnessed up to two or three sleighs and a barrel would be put on the driver’s seat of one of them. Old Vissarion would stand on it, dressed up in a cape made of matting and a hat decorated with bast leaves. He would drive the first sleigh and behind him would be other sleighs on which our servants crowded, singing songs. They would ride round the whole village and mummers from other villages would join them on their sleighs. A huge convoy would build up and the whole procession lasted until dusk. At around seven our main room would fill with people. The peasants had come to ‘bid farewell’ before the Lenten journey. Each one had a bundle in his hands with various offerings, such as rolls or long white loaves, and sometimes we children were given spiced cakes or dark honey loaves. We would exchange kisses with the peasants and wish each other well for the Lenten period. The offerings were put in a large basket and the peasants were given vodka and salted fish. On Sunday only our own Kartsevo peasants came to say goodbye, and peasants from other nearby villages would come on the Saturday. When the peasants left, the room would have to be sealed tightly as it smelt of sheepskin coats and mud. Our last meal before Lent began with special pancakes called ‘
In Moscow there would be skating on the ice of the Moscow river, where a famous fairground with circuses and puppet shows, acrobats and jugglers would draw huge crowds of revellers. But the aspect of the city would change dramatically on the first day of Lent. ‘The endless ringing of bells called everyone to prayer’, recalled Mikhail Zernov. ‘Forbidden food was banished from all houses and a mushroom market started up on the banks of the Moscow river, where one could buy everything one needed to survive the fast - mushrooms, pickled cabbage, gherkins, frozen apples and rowanberries, all kinds of bread made with Lenten butter, and a special type of sugar with the blessing of the Church.’11 During Lent there were daily services. With every passing day the religious tension mounted, until its release in Easter week, recalled Zernov.
On the eve of Easter Moscow broke out of its ordered services and a screaming, raving market opened on Red Square. Ancient pagan Rus’ was greeting the arrival of warm days and throwing down the gauntlet to orderly Orthodox
piety. We went every year to take part in this traditional Moscow celebration with our father. Even from far away, as you approached Red Square, you could hear the sounds of whistles, pipes and other kinds of homemade instruments. The whole square was full of people. We moved among the puppet booths, the tents and stalls that had appeared overnight. Our religious justifi-cation was buying willow branches for the All Night Vigil to mark Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. But we preferred the other stalls which sold all kinds of weird and useless things, such as ‘sea dwellers’ living in glass tubes filled with coloured liquid, or monkeys made from wool. It was difficult to see how they connected with Palm Sunday. There were colourful balloons with wonderful designs, and Russian sweets and cakes which we were not allowed. Nor could we go to see the woman with moustaches, or the real mermaids, or the calves with a double head.12
The Easter service is the most important service, and the most beautiful, in the Russian Church. As Gogol once remarked, the Rus-sians have a special interest in celebrating Easter - for theirs is a faith based on hope. Shortly before midnight every member of the congregation lights a candle and, to the subdued singing of the choir, leaves the church in a procession with icons and banners. There is an atmosphere of rising expectation, suddenly released at the stroke of midnight, when the church doors open and the priest appears to proclaim in his deep bass voice ‘Christ is risen!’ - to which he receives the response from the thronging worshippers: ‘He is risen indeed!’ Then, as the choir chants the Resurrection Chant, the members of the congregation greet one another with a three-fold kiss and the words ‘Christ is risen!’ Easter was a truly national moment - a moment of communion between the classes. The landowner Maria Nikoleva recalled Easter with her
