Russain Theology :: essays research papers

Chapter 5 The sniffy Inquisitor"EVEN this must have a preface -- that is, a literary preface," laughed Ivan, "and I am a poor hand at making one. You see, my action takes place in the sixteenth century, and at that time, as you probably learnt at school, it was customary in poetry to bring consume heavenly powers on earth. Not to speak of Dante, in France, clerks, as soundly as the monks in the monasteries, used to give regular performances in which the Madonna, the saints, the angels, Christ, and divinity Himself were brought on the stage. In those days it was done in on the whole simplicity. In Victor Hugos Notre Dame de Paris an edifying and gratuitous spectacle was provided for the people in the Hotel de Ville of Paris in the reign of Louis XI in honour of the have a bun in the oven of the dauphin. It was called Le bon jugement de la tres sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie, and she appears herself on the stage and pronounces her bon jugement. Similar plays, chief ly from the archaic Testament, were occasionally performed in Moscow too, up to the times of Peter the Great. just besides plays there were all sorts of legends and ballads scattered about the world, in which the saints and angels and all the powers of Heaven took part when required. In our monasteries the monks busied themselves in translating, copying, and even composing such poems- and even under the Tatars. There is, for instance, one such poem (of course, from the Greek), The Wanderings of Our madam done Hell, with descriptions as bold as Dantes. Our Lady visits hell, and the Archangel Michael leads her through the torments. She sees the sinners and their punishment. There she sees among others one noteworthy set of sinners in a destroy lake some of them sink to the bottom of the lake so that they cant swim out, and these perfection forgets- an font of extraordinary depth and force. And so Our Lady, shocked and weeping, falls before the keister of God and begs for merc y for all in hell- for all she has seen there, indiscriminately. Her conversation with God is immensely interesting. She beseeches Him, she will not desist, and when God points to the hands and feet of her Son, nailed to the Cross, and asks, How can I forgive His tormentors? she bids all the saints, all the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down with her and implore for mercy on all without distinction.