What are the Russian Spiritual Verses—or dukhovnye stikhi?1 They are religious songs, handed down predominantly in an oral tradition. Some, however, came to be written down, creating a culture in which both oral and written sources were drawn upon (Nikitina 1993: 50–2). They circulated throughout Russia, and some as far as Bulgaria.
Their date of original composition is a matter of speculation. A few find echoes in Old Russian literature, notably the ‘Lament of Adam’, of which Daniel the Recluse shows knowledge in the twelfth century, but the bulk of these songs are likely to be much later. Some may go back to the late Middle Ages, specially those in narrative form, akin to the secular lays celebrating heroes, but the most sober dating for the ones I shall be citing, at least in their final or near final forms, would be the seventeenth century, the period of the explosion of devotion accompanying the Old Believer schism. Indeed the Old Believers (a schismatic group that rejected the liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow) were particularly active in circulating these songs (Nikitina 1993: 48, 57).
The systematic collection and publication of these songs began in the mid-nineteenth century. My source is the collection of these songs published by Pyotr Bessonov (originally spelt Bezsonov) in six fascicles from 1861 to 1864. He made use of written sources, but principally of songs heard and written down by himself and other collectors.2 His collection has the great merit of printing a large number of variant versions of the songs he includes. The variations reveal the scope for individual modifications, in most cases within quite strict limits. If these songs were originally centuries older than their recording in written form, one would expect the degree of variation in content and style to be greater than it is.
Although the written texts were used for reading, these hymns were in the main composed to be sung, by a single singer or by a group of singers (from two or three to a dozen) singing in harmony. Who were these performers, and where did they perform? Bessonov entitled his collection Kaleki Perekhozhie—a phrase meaning wandering minstrels. These were often blind or otherwise disabled, and typically performed these songs in monasteries or shrines at times when there was a concourse of pilgrims. They lived on the donations they received from their hearers.
One song they used when directly soliciting alms is particularly expressive of their standing in society and in the Church:
These are the reasons for my poverty: I have no village, I dig no vineyard, I do not make sea voyages, I do not make purchases from visitors, I do not serve a prince, I am not tied to boyars, I am not needed for service. I am forgetful of the teaching in books, I do not hold to the Church of God, I transgress the commandments of my spiritual father. Thereby I anger God, I do not hold in my memory any good thing. But before the end, O God, grant me repentance! (Bessonov §7)
It would be a mistake, of course, to take this self-deprecation literally. But the humble status of these minstrels is not to be doubted, and I shall give examples that illustrate the limits of their acquaintance with official church teaching.
In another text the minstrel intercedes for his hearers and invokes the Mother of God.
Mother of God, God-bearer,3 swift helper, warm-hearted intercessor! Come, save, and take pity on this master’s house. Save it from burning by fire and flooding by water. (Bessonov §16.1–7)
This is followed by similar prayers to the ‘Lord God’ (meaning Christ) and then to various saints. The song concludes:
And we, God-carriers, walk over the land, wander along the water, as we acclaim the Mother of God, the God-bearer, [exclaiming] ‘Christ has risen!’
The word ‘God-carriers’ (bogonostsy) did not have the more exalted meaning of the equivalent Greek word (theoforoi), meaning ‘inspired’, but meant people who took part in religious processions with an icon on their chests (Dal’ 1903–9 I: 254).
The references to the ‘house’ in this last text points to the singing of Spiritual Verses in a domestic setting as well as in monasteries or shrines, and indeed they were sung not only by wandering minstrels, but also by peasants and in particular peasant women, Old Believers and members of the established Orthodox Church alike, who derived their repertoire from the minstrels. Indeed through singing in houses and teaching their repertoire the minstrels could make a good living. Peasants who learnt their songs could themselves augment their income by performing locally. In a domestic setting these songs were sung on feast-days or the eves of feasts, but also on other days, often as an accompaniment to indoor work, notably spinning and weaving. Folklorists collecting this material encountered wandering minstrels until collectivization in the 1930s; domestic singing of them has been taken down in recordings as recently as 1998 (Fedorova 2004: 4).
But what of the content of these songs? It should be said at once that they are not predominantly Marian. A great number of them relate stories from the Gospels, or stories or legends taken from hagiography. Just as the songs were transmitted orally, so many of them betray a knowledge that had likewise been orally acquired and not in immediate contact with literary texts.
There are Marian hymns, predictably, that treat the familiar Gospel episodes relating to the birth of Christ—the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Flight into Egypt. These contain little that is unexpected, or which express anything distinctive in the way of Marian devotion.4 Predominantly, however, the Spiritual Verses concentrate not on the Madonna and Child, despite the dominance of this theme on icons of Our Lady, but on the grief of the Virgin at the foot of the Cross.
This we find in the Kniga golubinaya (‘The Book of the Dove’), which appears to be one of the earliest of these texts, and which claims to derive from a book that came down from heaven.5 This poem devotes only a few lines to the Virgin, but these are strikingly distinctive:
The plakun-trava [= plant of weeping] is the mother of all plants. And why is the plakun-trava the mother of all plants? The Mother the all-pure God-bearer was weeping tears over her Son, over her beloved Son, and dropped all-pure tears on the ground. And from these all-pure tears there was born the plakun-trava, the mother of plants.6 (Bessonov §77.107–14)
Plenty of these songs, naturally enough, treat Christ’s Passion, and in most of these there is a dialogue between Christ and the Virgin, in which the Virgin laments and Christ consoles her with a prophecy of his Resurrection (Bessonov §§356–88). This is a familiar theme, but many of these songs contain unusual elements. For example, in one of them the Virgin is not consoled by Christ, but herself calls on him to rise from the dead:
I know not now how to calm my distress, for my Son is dead. Rise up, [my] child, give joy to one weeping, renew in her heart the sweetness of a mother!
(Bessonov §357.19–22)
A particularly notable song is the Dream of the all-holy Virgin, of which Bessonov wrote, ‘There is no composition that is more widely and more universally known’ (Bessonov VI: 174). Let us follow one version of it. Note the way in which the time sequence jumps about, in a way confusing for the rational minds of modern readers.
‘My mother, mother Mary, Virgin all-pure, all-holy, where did you, mother, pass the night?’
‘I was in the mountains, in a cave, in the cathedral church. Not long had I fallen asleep, when I dreamt a dread dream, as if I gave birth to Christ, conceiving through the Holy Spirit, and wrapped him in swaddling-clothes’.7
Then Christ himself prophesied in the womb: ‘My mother, mother Mary, Virgin all-pure, all-holy! No dream did you dream, mother, but you saw a dread vision. You dreamt of a flow of blood, that I, Christ, will be crucified by the murderous Jews’.8
At Christmas Christ was born, at the Feast of the Baptism Christ was baptized, John the Baptist baptized him, Simeon took him in his arms.9 By that river Jordan, on that beautiful steep bank there grew a cypress tree. On that cypress tree there appeared a wondrous Cross, there a wondrous Cross to give life. There on that life-giving Cross the Jews tortured and crucified Christ …
There accompanied him Mother Mary, the Virgin all-pure, all-holy: ‘O Lord God, heavenly king! You were said to be immortal; you receive a pointless death, you pour forth innocent blood, you leave me, your mother, alone. Who will look after my old age, who will put my remains to rest, who will take my soul into the kingdom?’
Christ prophesied on the Cross: ‘My mother, mother Mary! I do not leave you alone, I leave with you a saint, John the Precursor, the Baptist, the friend of Christ, to take the place of your son’.10
‘O Lord God, heavenly king! John the Precursor is not the one I hope for’.11
‘Wait for a short time, mother. When the Jews take me down from the Cross, they will place my body in a shroud, close a tomb of stone and lower it into [our] mother the damp earth, and cover it with yellow sand. Here a great passion will come to pass … when I, mother, will come to life at the brilliant resurrection of Christ. … At that time I shall not send angels to you, but I myself shall come to you the all-holy one, I myself shall draw out your soul [and take it] with me into the kingdom of heaven. I shall paint your face on a icon, and place your image in God’s church, in the church of God and behind the glorious altar of Christ.12 I myself shall pray to your face; I myself shall kiss you,13 the all-holy one.14 Then there shall come to you, mother, honourable people, patriarchs and kings, princes and boyars, and all orthodox Christians, to venerate you with honourable prayers, and put up bright candles. You, mother, they will magnify, and me, the Son of God, they will praise’.
He who knows this Dream and cherishes it at home … will be protected from all misfortune, protected from fire, protected from flood, saved from everlasting torment, and inherit the kingdom of heaven. (Bessonov §605)
Several details in this poem deserve comment. ‘Mother the damp earth’ is an expression of Russian folk culture, related to the ground as not only the feeder and provider, but also a living power that sympathizes with the sorrows of men and at the same time deplores their sinfulness. There was a peasant custom of confessing one’s sins to the earth, rather than to a priest. ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘the Mother of God’ were closely associated, at times to the point of an imaginative identification (Nikitina 1993: 104–6).
The ‘cathedral church’ where the dream is located is the Holy Sepulchre. Indeed in one version of this hymn the Virgin is described as having the dream when asleep ‘in the sanctuary on the altar’ (Bessonov §609.6). Its location here facilitates the switch in time and place from the Virgin’s dream to the Mother of God at the foot of the Cross.
In all versions of the poem it is taken for granted that Christ will return to take his mother into the life to come at his resurrection, in contrast to the standard narratives of the Dormition. Universal too is the statement that Christ will take his mother’s soul. Some versions are quite specific that her body will remain on earth, for instance (Christ is addressing his Mother): ‘I shall bury your remains with the saints, in God’s church behind the altar. I shall bid farewell to you, mother, I shall kiss your remains, and as I leave them I shall perform a prostration’ (Bessonov §615.55–9). The doctrine of the bodily assumption of the Virgin into heaven is virtually absent from the Spiritual Verses.15 Georgy Fedotov in his book on the Spiritual Verses attributes this to a desire on the part of the faithful to keep her relics with us on earth (Fedotov 1991: 52).
A number of songs place the Virgin’s lament in the context of her going about looking for Christ just after his Passion. Here is one example (Bessonov §381):16
In the last days of the month of March, on the fifth day of Passion Week, in the holy city of Jerusalem the holy Virgin was weeping and wandering; with her were three women carrying myrrh. In the city two Jews came to meet them. The holy Virgin broke into tears and asked, ‘Where were you, Jews, where are you going?’
The two Jews replied to the Virgin, ‘We now live in Jerusalem, and we have beaten and tortured Jesus Christ, beaten and tortured him, cast him into prison. On Friday at the sixth hour we crucified him, knocking nails into his legs and hands, placing a crown on his head, inflicting torments and wounds beyond counting. We pierced Jesus’ ribs with a lance, and the earth was stained red by his blood.’
On hearing their words, the holy Virgin lost consciousness for more than an hour. She fell to the ground, scarcely alive; the women looked on and stayed near her. She broke into tears and groans, exclaiming in her grief: ‘Woe is me, damp earth, take me to yourself! My beloved Son, my hope, why did you not obey your mother? … Why do you leave me here alone? Would that I had tasted death with you! Who will comfort me now from bitter tears? … In great fear and horror all the apostles have fled into hiding, leaving me to weep alone. … My joy has sunk into the grave.’
Then the Lord spoke to his mother: ‘On the third day I shall arise and glorify you, and your joy will have no end.’
A related song, which likewise starts with the Virgin wandering in search of Christ, is the Khozhdenie (or Wandering) of the holy Virgin (Bessonov §392):
The holy Virgin was going and seeking, going and seeking Jesus Christ. To meet the Virgin there came two Jews.
‘Was it not you, Jews, accursed Jews, was it not you who crucified Christ?’
‘It was not us, Virgin, it was not our fathers, it was our forefathers who crucified Christ17’.
On Mount Sion three trees are standing, three trees are standing, cypress trees.18 From these trees they cut beams, and from the beams they made a cathedral church.19 In this cathedral there stand three tombs. In the first tomb is Jesus Christ himself; in the second tomb is John the Precursor;20 in the third tomb is the holy Virgin. Above Jesus Christ candles are warming; above John the Precursor lamps are burning; above the holy Virgin a vine has grown up. On this vine three birds are sitting, three birds are sitting. Piteous their song, piteous their song, as of parting they chant.
In contrast to the melancholy end of this hymn, a variant version concludes:
In the third tomb is the holy Virgin. Above Jesus Christ they chant prayers, above the Precursor they burn candles, but above the holy Virgin flowers have burst into flower, flowers have burst into flower, azure flowers, and on these flowers sit birds, singing cherubic versicles. (Bessonov §395.17–23)
In this version of the poem the Virgin wanders looking for Jesus ‘in holy Russia (Rus’)’ (§395.1). This does not mean Russia according to some narrow geographical specification. Note how in one version of the Kniga Golubinaya (‘The Book of the Dove’), one of the earliest of these hymns, ‘Holy Russia’ is defined as the land where the crucified God is worshipped (Bessonov §80.101–7). The implication is that all lands where Christ is worshipped count as holy Russia.21
Is not only the Virgin, but Christ himself still in his grave? There are Spiritual Verses that treat the Ascension, but the texts that think in other terms remain striking. The various versions of the Kniga Golubinaya are particular rich on this theme. In one of them we find:
Why is the cathedral church the mother of all churches? Because there stands in it a stone tomb, where repose the remains22 of Christ himself, Christ himself, the heavenly king. (Bessonov §83.78–81)
The tomb is sometimes imagined as floating in the air:
In the city of Jerusalem stands a devout cathedral church. In this cathedral church there hangs in the air a white stone tomb, and in this white stone tomb repose the remains of Christ himself, the heavenly king. (Bessonov §88.87–93)
How are we to account for this? It is to be noted that none of the Spiritual Verses take Christ’s resurrection as their main subject (Fedotov 1991: 44); and those that refer to it do so in inconsistent ways. Alongside songs that treat the ascension and indeed confuse it with the resurrection on the third day, we find one group of songs on the theme of the Last Judgement in which Christ’s resurrection is said to occur immediately before it (Bessonov §§497–502). To quote the opening of one to them:
The heavenly king will rise,23 his right hand will be lifted up, yes, to the highest heavens. When the dread judgement occurs, the angels will blow trumpets …, the books will be opened, all our deeds will be read out, all our sins revealed.
(Bessonov §497.1–15)
Songs which celebrate Christ in heaven coexisted with songs that speak of him as still in the tomb. The same is true of the hymns on the Virgin. Christ and the Virgin are assimilated to the saints, thought of as being simultaneously in heaven and in their shrines, and alive in both. The same could be true of the third tomb, that of John the Divine, if we remember the passage in the Gospel of John (21:22–3) where Jesus says to Peter, ‘If it is my will that he [the beloved disciple] remain until I come, what is that to you?’, and the evangelist continues, ‘So the saying spread abroad that this disciple was not to die.’ In this context the location of the tombs in Jerusalem, on Mount Sion, is significant, for it was thought of as both the centre and the apex of the world, and therefore a suitable place from which Christ, perhaps suspended in the air, may look down and reign (Nikitina 1993: 107).
Where now is the Mother of God, and where is she accessible? The answer given in these songs is that she is accessible to her devotees in her icons in every church—as mentioned in Christ’s consolation of the Virgin after his Crucifixion in the Dream of the all-holy Virgin cited above in the section ‘The Virgin weeping at the cross’.
One song that again has come down in a variety of versions tells of an unexpected episode in the life of St Basil of Caesarea, starting with his visit to a church (Bessonov §§572–8). To cite one of them:
Basil prayed to the Lord God out of the desire of his heart with burning tears …: ‘Forgive me, all-holy God-bearer!’ A voice replied to him from the holy icon from the Mother the all-holy God-bearer: ‘Basil the Great, miracle-worker of Caesarea, if you wish to be an intimate of Christ, you must cease to drink strong drink, and then the all-holy God-bearer will protect you every hour.’ For twenty-five years alcohol had not entered the mouth of Basil, but on one occasion he drank and did not confess it; and then for thirty-five years the evil roots [therefrom] did not leave his head. (Bessonov §576.2–16)
There follows a long denunciation of drunkards, particularly among the clergy. We then return to St Basil (here I cite a slightly variant text of this poem):
St Basil the Great, the miracle-worker of Caesarea, stood in the church porch and uttered a prayer, like thunder out of his lips …: ‘When you forgive me, Lord, then I shall leave this church, but if you do not forgive me, I shall remain in this porch till death.’ The all-holy God-bearer herself came down from the sanctuary, stretching out her all-holy hands: ‘Basil the Great, miracle-worker of Caesarea, God forgives and absolves you.’ (Bessonov 572.80–92)
The Virgin’s patronage of those devoted to her was thought of as extending also into the realm of liturgy. In a song on the battle of Kulikovo (in 1380), celebrated ever afterwards as the decisive event in the freeing of Russia from the Mongol yoke, the Virgin is depicted as heading a procession of archangels and apostles over the field of battle after the victory, while they sang the funeral service and she herself, as the chief celebrant, waved the censer (Bessonov §156.23–9).
In some of these songs the Virgin’s power extends well beyond the forgiveness of sinners, and as far as aiding the continuing work of creation. One hymn relates how in the third year after Christ’s resurrection a stone descended from heaven, containing a scroll on which was inscribed a long message from Christ. In the course of this message Christ speaks of his Mother as follows:
The first mother is the all-holy God-bearer; the second mother is the damp earth; the third mother has pain in childbirth. If the all-holy God-bearer does not give her aid, nothing on earth can be born alive, neither beast nor bird, nor human being. But if the holy God-bearer gives her aid, then every creature on earth can be born alive, beast and bird, and human being. (Bessonov §564.162–73)
Here the Virgin’s ‘motherhood’ extends beyond her divine Son to the whole animate creation. The Virgin’s unique closeness to God is sometimes expressed with a notable lack of caution. In a song on Dives and Lazarus, who in this version are brothers, Lazarus in paradise replies to his brother’s entreaty as follows:
I am not angry with you, that you persecuted me with savage dogs. I would wish to rescue you from the deep furnace. But it is not my will [that counts] but the will of God himself, of the all-holy Virgin the God-bearer. (Bessonov §25.138–43)
This is not far from a line in a folk version of the Life of St Alexis, which says of the saint’s journey from Rome to Edessa (entirely by sea!): ‘Alexis was conveyed by the Holy Spirit, the all-holy Mother the God-bearer’ (Adrianova-Peretts 1917: 266).
The importance of the Virgin’s intercession is increased by the extreme rarity in these hymns to Christ himself responding to prayer (Fedotov 1991: 47). That task is entirely delegated to the saints and supremely to the Mother of God.
A number of songs attribute a decisive role to the Mother of God at the Last Judgement. Bessonov’s collection contains a series of hymns on the Last Judgement where sinners repeatedly appeal to the Virgin as, hopefully, a sympathetic intercessor (Bessonov §§476–86). But the roles assigned respectively to Christ and his Mother do not correspond to the simple distinction, familiar in many Western sources, between Christ as the spokesman for retributive justice and the Virgin as the advocate for boundless mercy.
In one song Christ pronounces, in accordance with Matthew 25, the traditional rewards for those who have fed the hungry, clothed the naked and the rest, and the traditional punishment for those who have failed to do so (Bessonov §478). The condemned appeal to the Virgin, who intercedes on their behalf. But Christ replies, ‘I can for your sake forgive sinners from eternal torment, from the unquenchable fire, all for your sake, Lady and God-bearer. But can you bear to see me, mother, crucified anew?’ To this the Virgin responds, ‘I cannot forget your former torments, I cannot drink that cup or weep with bitter tears. It is not for such a sinful people that I feel pity, but for the Son I bore.’ And Christ repeats his condemnation.
In a variant hymn in this group, again echoing Matthew 25, the Virgin takes the place of Christ himself, welcoming the righteous into the bliss of heaven and consigning the wicked (who appeal to her mercy) to unquenchable fire (Bessonov §486). Here the ascription to the Virgin of the role of the eschatological judge deprives her of her more traditional and distinctive role of being the advocate for the defence.24
But surely more important is the fact that in this group of songs it is regularly the Virgin to whom sinners appeal for mercy. The message of the hymns is that devotion to the Virgin must not be allowed to become an alternative to obeying the commandments. Here we hear the voice of the Church, with these songs serving ecclesiastical authority. The mass of the faithful are likely to have continued to place their hopes in the Virgin’s compassion. And as regards these songs we can at least say that they attribute the Virgin’s refusal of mercy not to a stern regard for justice, but to her distress over her Son, whom sinners crucify anew. It is Mary at the foot of the Cross that remains the focus of the Spiritual Verses.
Researchers have shown that the Spiritual Verses have as their foundation written stories, more or less of church production. In almost all cases their sources are to be found in Holy Scripture, saints’ lives or various apocrypha. It follows that the original authors of the verses must have been men who were either bookish or at least familiar with ecclesiastical literature. (Fedotov 1991: 14)
This was the judgement of the noted religious philosopher Georgy Fedotov (1886–1951), written in reaction to those who saw in these hymns the expression of a folk culture ignorant of, and indifferent to, church teaching, and with pagan beliefs just beneath the surface. Certainly these singers will have had contact with monks and priests, and a poem like the tale of St Basil’s taking to the bottle is in support of church discipline—in this case, the discouragement of drunkenness among the clergy. But we have seen that these hymns contain elements that are startlingly at variance with standard Christian belief, such as locating the remains of both Christ and the Virgin in the Holy Sepulchre, and describing Christ as praying to images of the Virgin. In addition, the recurrent confusion between John the Baptist and John the Divine does not suggest any direct knowledge of the Bible. Of course there are wide variations, and some of the Spiritual Verses show a good knowledge of stories from hagiography; but the songs I have cited on the Virgin give evidence of a piety and poetic creativity unhampered by written texts and ecclesiastical norms.25
It may be suggested that many of the departures from standard items of Christian belief are to be attributed to a combination of, on the one hand, a lack of catechetical instruction and, on the other, a dependence on icons. As for the first, it was an innovation in the middle of the seventeenth century when Patriarch Nikon instructed priests (at least those educated enough) to preach sermons; the Old Believers were horrified at this innovation and condemned it as a ‘heresy’. The ‘priestless’ Old Believers had in any case no clergy at all. As for the influence of icons, the standard Orthodox icon of the Resurrection depicts Christ rescuing Adam and Eve from Hades, but does not directly represent his departure from the tomb. And once Christ was located in the Holy Sepulchre, it was natural to think that the Mother of God and St John (with the Precursor and the Divine being constantly confused) accompanied him there—because of the familiar representations of the Deesis, where the Virgin and John the Baptist stand one on each side of Christ. As for lack of belief in the bodily assumption of the Virgin, the standard icon of the Dormition represents Christ taking the Virgin’s soul from her body, but not her bodily assumption into heaven.26
One feature that appears in a number of songs is a promise that those who sing and hear them will receive protection from the dangers of life. A classic example is the close of the Dream of the all-holy Virgin (cited above in the section ‘The Virgin weeping at the cross’): ‘He who knows this Dream and cherishes it at home … will be protected from all misfortune’—and a variety of misfortunes are then listed. The very wording of such promises betrays the influence of magical texts that had been circulating in folk culture for centuries (Nikitina 1993: 52).27
In all, the Spiritual Verses are a striking example of how a popular cult to the Virgin can develop, in touch with the official Church, tolerated by the Church, but certainly not under her control, and able to use the imagination to fashion poetic images—ones that are capable of bringing fresh life to themes that can become hackneyed in the preaching of the clergy.