XV The Slav in Historic Christianity
When the sword of Rome, the ideals of Athens and the faith of Judea strove for the mastery of the world, the Slavs were still unknown to history. Upon the middle European plain, along the Don, the Dnieper and the Vistula they lived a semi-nomadic life, at war only with bear, elk and boar, and at peace with the dominant races in the west of Europe which scarcely knew of their existence.
Very early in the Christian era, the transition from nomadic to agricultural life took place, and they became so identified with the soil that some of the agricultural terms they used have been embodied in other European languages.
The facts that the Slavs inhabited the eastern portions of Europe to its very edge, that Christian civilization was imposed upon them by Byzantine and Roman influences, when both were struggling for the mastery of the Christian world, and that the territory they inhabited became their battle-ground—had great and lasting effect, not only upon their political history but upon their religious life and their national character.
The Slavs then are a late product of Christian civilization; an unfinished and inharmonious product which is at its worst, where later Greek and Roman influences touched it, most turbulent where modern Western ideas have suddenly affected it, and at its best and rarest where the Slav’s own talents and resources have had a chance for rational development and adjustment.
That which complicates the problem presented to us by the Slav is the fact that in spite of his occupying practically contiguous territory, the close family bond was early broken by conquering armies, by rival missionary groups, by invading aliens who came to pillage, barter and trade, and by the influx of his neighbours, who varied all the way from Tartar and Turk to German and Magyar; from Finn and Armenian to Greek and Albanian.
When we speak of Slavs to-day we refer to Aryan people, whatever that may mean beyond the fact that they are Europeans, presenting no great ethnic variations; although there is no doubt that Mongol and Finnish blood has found its way into the veins of the Eastern Slavs. We also mean that they speak a closely related language, the Slavic; but which has become so differentiated in time that there are now literatures in Russian, Polish, Czechish, Servian and Bulgarian; each a distinct language, differing in alphabet, grammar, accent or sentence construction.
Besides these, there are other dialects, vital enough and varied enough to have created their own literature, and zealously guarded as their mother tongue by the people who speak them.
These linguistic differences have aided in complicating the religious and political problems among them. Thus, the Russians and the Poles have been made hereditary enemies, largely, because one received its Christian doctrines from Rome and the other from Constantinople; Ruthenians and Poles in Austria have been pitted against each other in an age-long struggle, by a difference in liturgies; Slovaks and Czechs, almost twin brothers, are little better than strangers to one another, because of a few hooks in the alphabet and a few variations in pronunciation.
The whole Southern Slavic group remains politically ineffective because of the dissimilarities of the Cyrilian and Latin alphabets and all that their difference is made to imply.
Even when transplanted to America, these contentions are magnified by the churches and governments concerned, which thus are effective in the continued separation of related groups.
If the Slavs may be called one race, they certainly present a kaleidoscopic conglomerate out of which emerge three groups: the Western, Eastern and Southern Slavs.
Besides their common racial bond, each group is related by language, economic environment, determined by climatic and political conditions, and above all, by religion, which is a stronger bond than even ties of racial kinship.
The entire Slavic world is living under the dominion of religion more or less clearly interpreted and understood. This manifests itself in conversation with the people. “God help you on your way!” “Go with God.” “Praised be the Lord Jesus Christ!” are common greetings as one journeys along Slavic highways and byways.
The names of the Deity and of the Saviour or the Virgin are never uttered without lifting the hat, accompanied by the words: “Slava i cast nyim budi!” Honour and praise to them!
The highways among the Western Slavs, who are largely Roman Catholic, are lined by crosses, chapels and shrines; and no matter how wretched the village, its church is well appointed and its peasants are not quite happy at the end of the year, unless its monotony was broken by a pilgrimage to some shrine where the Virgin waits, ready to bestow her blessing of good health or other rich favours supposed to be in her special keeping.
Feast days and fast days follow one another in quick succession and no season of the year or event in life is left unhallowed by religious observances.
All this is equally true of the Eastern and Southern Slavs who, with but few exceptions, belong to the Greek Orthodox church, and are cast in a religious mold as fixed as the form of the Byzantine icon, the symbol of that church.
To the Russians, the largest body among the Eastern Slavs, religion is an atmosphere in which they “live and move and have their being.” Among them also, church feasts and fasts regulate the days, while either the pleasure or the pain they bring is willingly accepted.
Sacrifices of candles and oil are freely offered and no pilgrimage is too wearisome to be undertaken. Visiting the tombs of saints and the dwelling places of hermits is a national mania, and religious ceremonies, which in their origin and meaning are wholly Pagan, take place in hut and palace alike; for no class of Russian society is quite free from gross superstitions. The peasant coachman, who drives his miserable beast over the cobblestone pavement, crosses himself before every chapel and icon; while his passenger, be he a general, a university professor or one of the common people, will do the same, with perhaps only a little less unction.
Yet, in spite of the fact that religious forms dominate the life of the masses of the Slavs, there are no people in Europe who less understand the real value of religion, whose conduct towards each other is so little affected by it or to whom it is so entirely a mere belief in the mysterious forces of Heaven and Hell which can be appeased by prayers, formulas, sacrifices and pilgrimages. Religion with them has seemingly nothing to do with sobriety, chastity, conquering the will, or the cultivation of the inner virtues.
The blame for this lies largely with the clergy, which, whether it is in Russia, Bulgaria or the countries inhabited by the different Servian nationalities, stimulates the superstition of the people and does but little to enlighten or ennoble them.
The priests nowhere occupy or deserve the place which they hold among the Western Slavs, and where the Roman Catholic minority has any fighting ground among the Southern Slavs, as in Servia,—there the Franciscans and Trappists tower above the Greek clergy as benefactors of their people and often as true saints and martyrs.
My assertion that the Slav is by nature truly religious, and that the clergy is in a great measure to blame for his hopelessly low standards, is proved by the remarkable phenomenon of the sects, which especially in Russia flourish, in spite of persecution. They grew up from within; some of them, supposedly before the Reformation, and still they are being formed and developed.
These sects range all the way from the most fanatical, whose members seek salvation in voluntary death or in some revolting form of mortification of the flesh, to large and influential bodies, kinsmen to our Quakers, Baptists and Methodists.
It is this hunger for religion which is the most hopeful characteristic of the Slavs, and one which ought to make contact with them less difficult than we usually imagine it to be.
The problem is, how to purge these movements from fanaticism when transferred to America; although in our soberer, freer and more practical atmosphere the dangerous elements are apt to be spontaneously corrected.
Protestantism, as a manifestation of historic Christianity, antedates among them the German Reformation and was contemporaneous with the earliest movements in England. History clearly shows that the Protestant spirit found kinship among the Slavs and that it is still alive. Evidences of this are the sect of the Bogumils early in the fourteenth century, which has left its traces among the Southern Slavs as far as Bosnia; the Hussite movement so vitally effective in preparing the way for Martin Luther and still a force in the national life of Bohemia—and the various sects among the Russians.
This Protestant spirit in its conventional form, as found in Bohemia, in Poland to some extent and among the Slovaks of Hungary, is unfortunately no more a factor than the Mother Church in the shaping of character, in inducing right social relations, or in determining the future of the Slavic race.
There are, however, various Protestant forces at work among these people; forces which emphasize spiritual and ethical ideals; such as the missions of the American Board, in Bohemia; the devoted and enthusiastic members of the “Gemeinschaft” in Kattowitz in Silesia, strategically situated where three great empires meet; the Baptist missions in Russia, and above all, the returned immigrant, who comes home, often enthusiastically but sanely, practically and devotedly religious, and with whom rests largely the religious and political future of at least two Slavic nationalities, the Slovaks and the Ruthenians, the latest to be awakened to the economic possibilities in America.
The Slovaks for nearly a thousand years have retained their national consciousness, in spite of the fact that long ago they were conquered by the Magyars, who have used every possible means to wean them from their language, the one strong link binding them to their historic past.
Patiently they have endured a national martyrdom; although the world at large knows nothing of their sufferings.
Whenever they have tried to speak, prison doors have enforced silence. In the struggle between race and race, the Magyars, who themselves were persecuted for freedom’s sake, have, in their treatment of the Slovaks, violated every principle of political liberty.
In a little village called Hluboka, in the midst of their well tilled acres, lives a group of Slovaks whose Lutheran pastor, John Hurban, was a man who helped to keep alive this national spirit, for which he endured imprisonment and even faced the gallows. In 1892 the people erected a modest monument over his grave, and at its unveiling they were driven from the cemetery at the muzzle of the gun.
The son of the dead pastor wrote an article in the public press protesting against this, and he was sent to prison for twelve months. An editor, Ambrosius Pietor, was incarcerated for eighteen months, for writing two articles complaining of the treatment his people received. When he returned home at the expiration of his term, his admirers met him at the railroad station and some young girls presented him with bouquets of flowers.
Twenty-one persons who took part in this reception were sent to prison for an average of a month each, and the three young girls, who betrayed their native country by handing this man bouquets of flowers, had to pay fines, aggregating 400 kronen.
In 1906, 245 Slovaks were sent to prison, and from 1906 to the present time the number is not far from 500. I have already cited the nature of the offenses for which they are punished.
I have mentioned these facts, not because I wish to throw discredit upon the Magyars, for government and people are usually two different things; but because I wish to throw light upon these Slovaks who come to us to do our most menial work and whose worth is obscured by our not knowing them. Their clannishness, the tenacity with which they cling to their native speech, and their attitude towards our Christian and national institutions, find some explanation in the miseries they have endured for the sake of preserving some kind of national or racial entity.
I consider these Slovaks among the most unspoiled of all the Slavic peoples; low in the scale of culture, it is true, but of such innate goodness and possessing so many virtues, as to make them most desirable immigrants and splendid material upon which to graft the best of our Christian civilization.
Like all Western Slavs they are largely Roman Catholic, but with enough of the Protestant element mixed with it to have given evangelical faith a grappling place.
This broader vision with its ethical element has been transferred from America to the Slovaks in Hungary and is now manifesting itself in a company of people, which, though small, is so thoroughly in earnest and ethical as to prove that they can be brought into harmony with the most vital religious ideals.
Ruthenians, or Ukranians, as they call themselves, who belong to the Eastern Slavic group, are a most unhappy people; degraded by adverse economic and religious conditions, worse if possible than those of the most debased Russians whose closest kinsmen they are. In Austria a majority belongs to the Greek Catholic church, which is a union of the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches, maintaining distinct Byzantine dogmas and acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope.
There are about 34,000,000 of these people, numerically more important than the Poles, by whom a portion is governed or ill governed and persecuted. Neither have they any chance for full development in Russia where the largest number lives; nor in Hungary, where they make their home on the eastern slopes of the Carpathians. They are now struggling for the maintenance of their national consciousness and are bearing all the unfortunate consequences.
In the United States their protest has taken form politically, in a National Ukranian Society, and religiously, in a Ruthenian Free Church, and both deserve sympathetic aid from those who believe in political and religious freedom.
The great task of religion in its ministry to the Slav, and that no matter what its ancient form or symbol, will be to make clear to him the difference between God and Cæsar; for religion and nationality, Heaven and the throne, are confused in his mind.
It must also teach him that besides its sacramental value it has service value, whose obligations rest upon priest and people alike.
Religion must wean him from his ancient enemies, intemperance and superstition, and when it has done this, it has rendered a service which may again make of the Slavs a homogeneous race; great, vital, virile and well prepared to play a leading part in the future history of Europe as well as America, where they are now, numerically at least, the most important element in the great immigrant tide.