There were two Kyrills, both of them bishops; one Kyrill of Alexandria, and the other Kyrill of Jerusalem.
The first warred against the cursed heretic, Nestorius, who taught obscenely that Our Lady was born in original sin and therefore could not have given birth to God; but that she gave birth to a human being with the name and attributes of the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, and therefore she should be called not the God–Bearer, but the Christ–Bearer. Do you understand?
That is called heresy!
And Kyrill of Jerusalem fought against the Arian heretics.”
I was delighted with his knowledge of church history, and he, stroking his beard with his well-cared-for, priest-like hands, boasted:
“I am a past master in that sort of thing. When I was in Moscow, I was engaged in a verbal debate against the poisonous doctrines of the Nikonites, with both priests and seculars. I, my little one, actually conducted discussions with professors, yes!
To one of the priests I so drove home the verbal scourge that his nose bled infernally, that it did!”
His cheeks were flushed; his eyes shone.
The bleeding of the nose of his opponent was evidently the highest point of his success, in his opinion; the highest ruby in the golden crown of his glory, and he told the story voluptuously.
“A ha — a — andsome, wholesome-looking priest he was!
He stood on the platform and drip, drip, the blood came from his nose.
He did not see his shame.
Ferocious was the priest as a desert lion; his voice was like a bell.
But very quietly I got my words in between his ribs, like saws.
He was really as hot as a stove, made red-hot by heretical malice — ekh — that was a business!”
Occasionally other valuers came. These were Pakhomi, a man with a fat belly, in greasy clothes, with one crooked eye who was wrinkled and snarling; Lukian, a little old man, smooth as a mouse, kind and brisk; and with him came a big, gloomy man looking like a coachman, black bearded, with a deathlike face, unpleasant to look upon, but handsome, and with eyes which never seemed to move.
Almost always they brought ancient books, icons and thuribles to sell, or some kind of bowl. Sometimes they brought the vendors — an old man or woman from the Volga.
When their business was finished, they sat on the counter, looking just like crows on a furrow, drank tea with rolls and lenten sugar, and told each other about the persecutions of the Nikonites. Here a search had been made, and books of devotion had been confiscated; there the police had closed a place of worship, and had contrived to bring its owner to justice under Article 103.
This Article 103 was frequently the theme of their discussions, but they spoke of it calmly, as of something unavoidable, like the frosts of winter.
The words police, search, prison, justice, Siberia — these words, continually recurring in their conversations about the persecutions for religious beliefs, fell on my heart like hot coals, kindling sympathy and fellow feeling for these Old Believers. Reading had taught me to look up to people who were obstinate in pursuing their aims, to value spiritual steadfastness.
I forgot all the bad which I saw in these teachers of life. I felt only their calm stubbornness, behind which, it seemed to me, was hidden an unwavering belief in the teachings of their faith, for which they were ready to suffer all kinds of torments.
At length, when I had come across many specimens of these guardians of the old faith, both among the people and among the intellectuals, I understood that this obstinacy was the oriental passivity of people who never moved from the place whereon they stood, and had no desire to move from it, but were bound by strong ties to the ways of the old words, and worn-out ideas. They were steeped in these words and ideas.
Their wills were stationary, incapable of looking forward, and when some blow from without cast them out of their accustomed place, they mechanically and without resistance let themselves roll down, like a stone off a hill.
They kept their own fasts in the graveyards of lived-out truths, with a deadly strength of memory for the past, and an insane love of suffering and persecution; but if the possibility of suffering were taken away from them, they faded away, disappeared like a cloud on a fresh winter day.
The faith for which they, with satisfaction and great self-complacency, were ready to suffer is incontestably a strong faith, but it resembles well-worn clothes, covered with all kinds of dirt, and for that very reason is less vulnerable to the ravages of time.
Thought and feeling become accustomed to the narrow and oppressive envelope of prejudice and dogma, and although wingless and mutilated, they live in ease and comfort.
This belief founded on habits is one of the most grievous and harmful manifestations of our lives. Within the domains of such beliefs, as within the shadows of stone walls, anything new is born slowly, is deformed, and grows ansemic.
In that dark faith there are very few of the beams of love, too many causes of offense, irritations, and petty spites which are always friendly with hatred.
The flame of that faith is the phosphorescent gleam of putrescence.
But before I was convinced of this, I had to live through many weary years, break up many images in my soul, and cast them out of my memory.
But at the time when I first came across these teachers of life, in the midst of tedious and sordid realities, they appeared to me as persons of great spiritual strength, the best people in the world.
Almost every one of them had been persecuted, put in prison, had been banished from different towns, traveling by stages with convicts. They all lived cautious, hidden lives.
However, I saw that while pitying the “narrow spirit” of the Nikonites, these old people willingly and with great satisfaction kept one another within narrow bounds.
Crooked Pakhomie, when he had been drinking, liked to boast of his wonderful memory with regard to matters of the faith. He had several books at his finger-ends, as a Jew has his Talmud. He could put his finger on his favorite page, and from the word on which he had placed his finger, Pakhomie could go on reciting by heart in his mild, snuffling voice.
He always looked on the floor, and his solitary eye ran over the floor disquietingly, as if he were seeking some lost and very valuable article.
The book with which he most often performed this trick was that of Prince Muishetzki, called
“The Russian Vine,” and the passage he best knew was, “The long suffering and courageous suffering of wonderful and valiant martyrs,” but Petr Vassilitch was always trying to catch him in a mistake.
“That’s a lie!
That did not happen to Cyprian the Mystic, but to Denis the Chaste.”
“What other Denis could it be?
You are thinking of Dionysius.”
“Don’t shuffle with words!”
“And don’t you try to teach me!”
In a few moments both, swollen with rage, would be looking fixedly at one another, and saying:
“Perverter of the truth! Away, shameless one!”
Pakhomie answered, as if he were adding up accounts:
“As for you, you are a libertine, a goat, always hanging round the women.”
The shopman, with his hands tucked into his sleeves, smiled maliciously, and, encouraging the guardians of the ancient religion, cried, just like a small boy:
“Th — a — at’s right!
Go it!”