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Authors: Philip Longworth
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axe is there’), and to the Monastery of St George, where a set of the relics ofChrist’s Passion was locked away ‘and sealed with the imperial seal’. He kissed the body of St Anne there, the head of St John Chrysostom, and the head of St Basil in another monastery, and joined a procession which was following the icon of Mary ‘the Virgin Mother of God … [painted] by St Luke … while she was still alive … ‘
‘You go from there to the Monastery … Church of the Nine [Ranks of Angels] …’he continued. The ‘“Palace of the Orthodox Emperor Constantine” is there … as large as a town … [which has] walls higher than those of the city … The Monastery of St Sergius and Bacchus … is near by’ He kissed their heads too, and went on to the Hippodrome, and to kiss the hand of St John the Baptist, the remains of Gregory the Theologian, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel and of St Romanus … So the catalogue continues, enlivened by tales of stabbed icons which bled, comments on the beauty of the marble and of the singing — even the occasional confession. On visiting the tombs of the emperors he kissed them too, ‘even though they are not saints’. His account concludes with advice that has application to the modern tourist too: visiting ‘Constantinople is like entering a great forest. It is impossible to get about without a good guide, and if you try to go around on your own you will not be able to see or kiss a single saint, unless it happens to be that saint’s day.’ 16
The happy pilgrim Stephen’s contemporary, Sergius, was moulded by quite different circumstances. He was born in a less prosperous, more troubled, part of Russia at a time when, as in many other parts of Europe, despair was widespread and social values were changing. The unpromising outlook was encouraging migration out of towns, which were targets for the tax collectors and the war bands of rival princes, as well as Tatar raiders. Visitations of the Black Plague also encouraged movement to safer settlements and into the forests. There was a parallel tendency to avoid exposure to earthly risks and invest more in the spirit. Such were the disturbed conditions that shaped the early life of St Sergius.
Born in or around 1322, 17 the second of three brothers, he was christened Bartholomew. His parents were on their way down in the world. His father, a boyar who served the Prince of Rostov, belonged to the local elite. But Rostov was an enclave surrounded by the Principality of Moscow and being swallowed by it. In the course of his wars with Tver, Ivan had sent men to occupy parts of it and collect resources from its hapless people. But Ivan’s government was offering tax exemptions to people who would settle on wastelands north of Moscow, so the family moved there, to a place called Radonezh. 18 The boy’s life there began when he was seven, but he was a child of the outdoors, physical rather than bookish. He learned toread only years later. The state of the world was soon borne in on him, however, through both hearsay and experience.
His elder brother, Stefan, a widower with two small sons, entered a nearby monastery (what happened to his little boys is not recorded). Then his parents died, at which Bartholomew settled what remained of the family’s assets on his younger brother and set out into the forest, accompanied by Stefan the monk. The hagiographer states that Bartholomew had long wanted to become a monk, but he was not tonsured immediately. Perhaps he could not afford to enter a monastery. He had no assets to bring, and his older brother’s decision to leave his monastery and go with him may also have been prompted by the family’s straitened circumstances. The brothers decided to live as hermits in the wilderness, fending for themselves. Why they did so is not entirely clear. A sense of adventure may have counted; they may have felt an urge to escape the world.
They erected a brushwood hovel to shelter in, then
‘You go from there to the Monastery … Church of the Nine [Ranks of Angels] …’he continued. The ‘“Palace of the Orthodox Emperor Constantine” is there … as large as a town … [which has] walls higher than those of the city … The Monastery of St Sergius and Bacchus … is near by’ He kissed their heads too, and went on to the Hippodrome, and to kiss the hand of St John the Baptist, the remains of Gregory the Theologian, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel and of St Romanus … So the catalogue continues, enlivened by tales of stabbed icons which bled, comments on the beauty of the marble and of the singing — even the occasional confession. On visiting the tombs of the emperors he kissed them too, ‘even though they are not saints’. His account concludes with advice that has application to the modern tourist too: visiting ‘Constantinople is like entering a great forest. It is impossible to get about without a good guide, and if you try to go around on your own you will not be able to see or kiss a single saint, unless it happens to be that saint’s day.’ 16
The happy pilgrim Stephen’s contemporary, Sergius, was moulded by quite different circumstances. He was born in a less prosperous, more troubled, part of Russia at a time when, as in many other parts of Europe, despair was widespread and social values were changing. The unpromising outlook was encouraging migration out of towns, which were targets for the tax collectors and the war bands of rival princes, as well as Tatar raiders. Visitations of the Black Plague also encouraged movement to safer settlements and into the forests. There was a parallel tendency to avoid exposure to earthly risks and invest more in the spirit. Such were the disturbed conditions that shaped the early life of St Sergius.
Born in or around 1322, 17 the second of three brothers, he was christened Bartholomew. His parents were on their way down in the world. His father, a boyar who served the Prince of Rostov, belonged to the local elite. But Rostov was an enclave surrounded by the Principality of Moscow and being swallowed by it. In the course of his wars with Tver, Ivan had sent men to occupy parts of it and collect resources from its hapless people. But Ivan’s government was offering tax exemptions to people who would settle on wastelands north of Moscow, so the family moved there, to a place called Radonezh. 18 The boy’s life there began when he was seven, but he was a child of the outdoors, physical rather than bookish. He learned toread only years later. The state of the world was soon borne in on him, however, through both hearsay and experience.
His elder brother, Stefan, a widower with two small sons, entered a nearby monastery (what happened to his little boys is not recorded). Then his parents died, at which Bartholomew settled what remained of the family’s assets on his younger brother and set out into the forest, accompanied by Stefan the monk. The hagiographer states that Bartholomew had long wanted to become a monk, but he was not tonsured immediately. Perhaps he could not afford to enter a monastery. He had no assets to bring, and his older brother’s decision to leave his monastery and go with him may also have been prompted by the family’s straitened circumstances. The brothers decided to live as hermits in the wilderness, fending for themselves. Why they did so is not entirely clear. A sense of adventure may have counted; they may have felt an urge to escape the world.
They erected a brushwood hovel to shelter in, then
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