United States or Germany ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When one staretz disappeared, there were always ten new ones to take his place, and the flood mounted to such an extent that the authorities were often powerless to cope with it. Persecution seemed only to increase the popular hysteria, and caused the seekers after truth to act as though intoxicated, seeing themselves surrounded by a halo of martyrdom.
It harboured, among others, a douchoboretz; a "god" of the Sava persuasion, with his wife, representing the "Holy Ghost"; a chlyst, who rotated indefatigably round a tub of water; a captain who claimed the honour of brotherhood with Jesus Christ; a man named Pouchkin, who supposed himself to be the Saviour reincarnated; a skopetz who had brought a number of people from Moscow to be initiated into the sect of the Russian eunuchs; and the staretz Israïl, a famous seer, who desired to found a "Church Triumphant" among the inhabitants of the prison.
The crowds pressed around him and he walked among them barefooted, in spite of this being expressly forbidden by law. Finally, however, the police were roused, and one fine day he set forth at the government's expense for the "far-off lands" of Siberia. Cronstadt, town of drunkards and of miracle-workers par excellence, boasted about two hundred staretz.
Then, with a staff in his hand, he traversed Russia, and visited many staretz, or holy men. They taught him "the beginning and the middle of the end which does not exist," but poor Israïl was still conscious of an emptiness in his heart.
Frequently some out-of-work cobbler would leave his native village and set forth on a pilgrimage in the character of a staretz; or some "medical officer," unable to make a living out of his drugs, would establish himself as a miracle-worker and promptly grow rich.
Word Of The Day