monastery, the hermitage, so that in part, at least, he may share the life of heaven while still on earth.[1]
Leont'ev tells us that we must constrain ourselves to believe. This means that he subjected himself to this constraint, sacrificing science, above all natural science, to revelation. The medical man, the zoologist, the materialist, doing violence to his intelligence, came to believe in miracle, so that he could even imagine that when attacked by cholera the sight of an icon from Athos cured him within two hours.
Butfor Leont'ev the church proves in the end too complicated, with its multiplicity of hierarchs and monks; he requires a single view, he wishes to be guided by a single and perfectly definite opinion, he asks for a single authority—the autocrat, the tsar. This aspiration for real uniformity and unity should logically lead the defender of Byzantinism to the Roman papal church, for he demands a strong church, a true theocracy. In his polemic against Dostoevskii he rejects the humane all-man and the theology of Zosimus, but accepts the grand inquisitor, saying: "The grand inquisitor incorporates the positive side of Christianity." Leont'ev, as we have said, is willing to make concessions even to socialism because socialism has discipline. He conceives that the Russian autocracy may enter into an alliance with socialism and with ardent mysticism. When this happens, things will be made hot for many persons; then the grand inquisitor will be able to arise from the tomb and hold out his tongs to seize Dostoevskii.
In the polemic against Dostoevskii we read further that it is quite comprehensible to love the church. But to love contemporary Europe which is so cruelly persecuting the Roman church, a church that is grand and apostolic despite its profound dogmatic errors, to love this Europe is simply sinful.
His approval of the papacy and its grand inquisitors leads Leont'ev to Russian caesaropapism. It was no chance matter that Leont'ev, in the before-mentioned definition of Byzantinism, should have assigned the first place to political absolutism. In his aspiration for religious realism, he finds that for the church, too, the tsar becomes a practical and tangible head; to obey the tsar unconditionally and blindly, this is true Christianity.
It logically follows that Leont'ev's religion and Leont'ev's
- ↑ Leont'ev was married. I do not know if anything has hitherto been written concerning his relations with his wife. The only information I have on this subject is that his wife was long an invalid.
