to believe with all her heart . Just as her English mother, Alice, so renowned for her admiration, or, more accurately, her adoration, of the German religious philosopher David Strauss, had known how to believe.
Thus began the search for a man of God. One who would pray to God for a son.
An Hour And A Half With An Idiot?
The first to arrive was Mitya, called ‘Kozelsky’ or sometimes ‘the Nasal-voiced’ (for his difficulties in pronunciation). Dmitry Oznobishin, whom everybody just called Mitya, was a resident of the little town of Kozelsk. A description of him survives in the files of the security branch: ‘He wears his hair long and unbound and goes about barefoot the year round leaning on a staff. He dresses in a cassock of monk style.’ After the revolution, journalists poked fun at the tsarina by describing him as an idiot. As a result, Vyrubova tried in her testimony to protect the royal family from the pathetic Mitya. ‘I don’t think he was ever at the palace,’ she lied to the ExtraordinaryCommission. On the contrary, Mitya was there, and more than once.
From Nicholas’s diary: ‘14 January 1906. The man of God Dmitry came to see us from Kozelsk near the Optina Pustyn Monastery. He brought with him an image drawn according to a vision he had had. We talked for about an hour and a half.’
And not by accident. Mitya was, in point of fact, an exceptional person. ‘His influence on the popular masses is immense — he gives the money he receives from his admirers to the poor. There is a rumour that he has the gift of foreknowledge and clairvoyance,’ I read in the files of the Department of Police. And he did have that gift.
As Bishop Feofan testified in the File, ‘The “Blessed Mitya” undoubtedly had the gift of clairvoyance, as I was able to convince myself on the basis of my own experience: at our first meeting, he beautifully and precisely outlined the circumstance of my life … The course of the war with Japan was exactly predicted … by him, in particular the fall of Port Arthur.’ But Mitya’s prayers were in vain: the tsarina failed to give birth to a boy.
And then Matryona the Barefoot made her appearance. She brought an icon with her. But dressed in rags and shouting barely comprehensible prophecies like some Delphic oracle, the barefoot woman herself vanished from the court just as suddenly as she had appeared. From the testimony of Vyrubova: ‘I heard about Matryona the Barefoot…she brought the sovereign an icon in Peterhof, but I never saw her.’ We’ll make a note of that route to the royal palace: bring a miracle-working icon that will assist in the birth of a son.
Such was the world the royal couple were now living in. A world of miracles, holy relics, icons, and miracle-workers. And they seemed ever more out of place in Petersburg, where enlightened society was becoming openly atheistic. It is no accident that Chekhov wrote in a letter to the writer Kuprin, ‘I now look with astonishment on any intellectual who is a believer.’
But the royal couple believed that their world continued beyond the limits of the depraved capital somewhere out there among the distant villages scattered across the boundless empire. The World of Holy Rus, of the simple folk who loved God, the tsar, and the church.
And they were waiting for an emissary from that world.
They Had Been Led Astray By A Legend
But that world, which had duped the West for so long, no longer existed. Its place had been taken by a resentful, impoverished people with an ever-diminishing faith in its clergy. The writer and religious philosopher Sergei Nilus (whose works Nicholas and the tsarina would read during their incarceration) bitterly records in his book On the Banks of the River of God the story of a nun of his acquaintance: ‘A nun arrived … and told me that it is impossible now for nuns to travel by train: there is no abuse, mockery, or oath that Satanic malice will not pour down on their poor
Thus began the search for a man of God. One who would pray to God for a son.
An Hour And A Half With An Idiot?
The first to arrive was Mitya, called ‘Kozelsky’ or sometimes ‘the Nasal-voiced’ (for his difficulties in pronunciation). Dmitry Oznobishin, whom everybody just called Mitya, was a resident of the little town of Kozelsk. A description of him survives in the files of the security branch: ‘He wears his hair long and unbound and goes about barefoot the year round leaning on a staff. He dresses in a cassock of monk style.’ After the revolution, journalists poked fun at the tsarina by describing him as an idiot. As a result, Vyrubova tried in her testimony to protect the royal family from the pathetic Mitya. ‘I don’t think he was ever at the palace,’ she lied to the ExtraordinaryCommission. On the contrary, Mitya was there, and more than once.
From Nicholas’s diary: ‘14 January 1906. The man of God Dmitry came to see us from Kozelsk near the Optina Pustyn Monastery. He brought with him an image drawn according to a vision he had had. We talked for about an hour and a half.’
And not by accident. Mitya was, in point of fact, an exceptional person. ‘His influence on the popular masses is immense — he gives the money he receives from his admirers to the poor. There is a rumour that he has the gift of foreknowledge and clairvoyance,’ I read in the files of the Department of Police. And he did have that gift.
As Bishop Feofan testified in the File, ‘The “Blessed Mitya” undoubtedly had the gift of clairvoyance, as I was able to convince myself on the basis of my own experience: at our first meeting, he beautifully and precisely outlined the circumstance of my life … The course of the war with Japan was exactly predicted … by him, in particular the fall of Port Arthur.’ But Mitya’s prayers were in vain: the tsarina failed to give birth to a boy.
And then Matryona the Barefoot made her appearance. She brought an icon with her. But dressed in rags and shouting barely comprehensible prophecies like some Delphic oracle, the barefoot woman herself vanished from the court just as suddenly as she had appeared. From the testimony of Vyrubova: ‘I heard about Matryona the Barefoot…she brought the sovereign an icon in Peterhof, but I never saw her.’ We’ll make a note of that route to the royal palace: bring a miracle-working icon that will assist in the birth of a son.
Such was the world the royal couple were now living in. A world of miracles, holy relics, icons, and miracle-workers. And they seemed ever more out of place in Petersburg, where enlightened society was becoming openly atheistic. It is no accident that Chekhov wrote in a letter to the writer Kuprin, ‘I now look with astonishment on any intellectual who is a believer.’
But the royal couple believed that their world continued beyond the limits of the depraved capital somewhere out there among the distant villages scattered across the boundless empire. The World of Holy Rus, of the simple folk who loved God, the tsar, and the church.
And they were waiting for an emissary from that world.
They Had Been Led Astray By A Legend
But that world, which had duped the West for so long, no longer existed. Its place had been taken by a resentful, impoverished people with an ever-diminishing faith in its clergy. The writer and religious philosopher Sergei Nilus (whose works Nicholas and the tsarina would read during their incarceration) bitterly records in his book On the Banks of the River of God the story of a nun of his acquaintance: ‘A nun arrived … and told me that it is impossible now for nuns to travel by train: there is no abuse, mockery, or oath that Satanic malice will not pour down on their poor
Similar Books
