The Temples of the Mordvas

...When the bride comes out of her father's house she is handed a shroud, which she is told to hang over her bridal bed, and to leave there for three days and nights...

...In addition to this, the entire soil is mined by subterranean caverns connected with one another by underground passages, both natural and artificial, some of which harbored in ancient days the hordes that followed the famous brigand Stenka Razine, and the peasants who under the leadership of Pougatchov arose against Catherine II...

...But twice a year a rite recalling the sacrament of confirmation is celebrated, which consists in anointing with oil the people desirous of obtaining this privilege, and then giving them a vigorous box on the ear, the purpose of which is to strengthen them in their faith...

...The Mordvas returned to their former paganism, but-and here it is that the really curious fact enters-this worship was transformed from the wild thing it had originally been into a paro-dy of Christian rites in general, and Catholic rites in particular...

...We left our horses in the thick of the forest in care of a Mordva boy, and walked for a considerable distance, finding our way through bushes and high grasses...

...Confession is obligatory with them once a year at least, and the penitents, instead of standing before the priest, as is done in the Orthodox faith, prostrate themselves at his feet...

...Their early characteristics are still intact, and they have managed to retain their pagan temples, which are located underground in some spot unknown except to a very few, in the vast, almost virgin forests which abound in the Volga region...

...Every year on Saint John's Eve, a female calf, entirely white except for two black spots, is brought into these temples and solemnly slaughtered by a Mordva priest, and its blood is distributed among the people...

...Several times a year they assemble in those mysterious temples to celebrate their ancient rites, and to worship their hideous idols in their own weird and strange manner...

...We crept for a few minutes on all fours in what appeared to me to be a downward direction, then all at once found ourselves in a cavern of imposing proportions...

...He started on his perilous journey accompanied by a few young priests of his diocese, and spent five years among the Mordvas, "his own people," as he called them, preaching to them the Word of God and the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and making innumerable converts...

...This lamp, the Mordvas believe, represents the light that will light their way to heaven on Judgment Day...

...What they are fighting is faith in general, faith in a Supreme Being to Whom humanity is accountable for its good and bad actions...

...He had left behind him some of the priests who had accompanied him, but they did not succeed in the work he had begun, and after they died, it was allowed to drop...

...The descendants of the last Jadzving king (Rzev or Rzevin) became great and powerful nobles in Poland as well as in the Ukraine...

...The latter belonged officially to the Greek Orthodox Church in the days of the czars, having been forcibly converted to it during the reign of Catherine II, but this conversion never went further than paper...

...the Mordvas remained faithful to the idols their ancestors had worshiped, and never wavered in their allegiance to them...

...This fact can be accounted for partly by the existence of the almost impenetrable marshes and forests that abound in the Volga region...

...Of course he could no longer perform the sacred rites of the Church, and after much hesitation he returned to Poland, where he died in the odor of sanctity in 1152...

...These are to be found mostly in Siberia, and are represented by the Eskimos, the Yakoutes and Samo-yeds...

...Whenever a Mordva dies, secret ceremonies are performed over his body (I cannot describe them, because I was never told in what they consist) which are supposed to win salvation for the soul about to depart from this world...

...They are a curious race: strong, hardy men and women, excellent workers, good agriculturists, and far more industrious than the Russians...

...forests where man has hardly ever penetrated...

...after which he sprinkles its blood over the head of the culprits, who are supposed thus to be cleansed by it from their misdeeds...

...A Mordva came to fetch me at night, and we rode together to the distant forest where the temple was hidden...

...The latter's place is supposed to be on the altar, but he was not there when I visited this curious place, because "unbelievers," as Christians are called, are never allowed to look upon him...

...They were originally called Jadzvings...

...Unfortunately he was not allowed to finish his self-appointed task...

...Before the war I owned a property in that part of the world, and was upon excellent terms with the Mordva population, most of my farmers belonging to their race...

...One day one of them volunteered to obtain for me permission to visit one of their temples, a permission which was very rarely granted to a Christian...

...The walls of this cavern were covered with paintings of a distinctly Catholic character...

...Hidden" must be taken literally, because I doubt whether any stranger would have been able to discover this place of worship...

...They could, however, renounce this sacred character whenever they liked, although few among them ever did so...

...In the eighth century they were driven out of their haunts by the combined forces of the Poles and Lithuanians...

...Their religious services are far more like Catholic than Greek Orthodox services, and the hymns which they sing are the same as those in use in Catholic churches-translated, of course, into their own curious and guttural language, which does not bear the slightest resemblance either to Russian or to the dialect of the Tartar population which is very numerous in all the Volga region...

...The most curious thing about the Mordvas is that although most of them knew where their temples were located, they kept their secret so well that the police have never been able to find them...

...But the most curious thing in this last pagan sanctuary left in Europe, was a lamp, made exactly like those that hang in Catholic churches before the Holy Sacrament, a lamp which, I was told, is always kept lit before the shrine upon which the image of Ordou is solemnly put whenever a religious service takes place...

...Some of them migrated toward the south, and the Don and Dnieper regions, where they ultimately were incorporated with the Zaporogue Cossacks...

...Of course I was sworn to secrecy...

...They pledge themselves to keep it intact either until the following year, or until the arrival of the King of the World-that mysterious personage in whose advent the entire Volga region as well as Central Asia, implicitly believes, and through whose agency mankind is to be redeemed...

...There are also the Tcheremisses and the Mord-vas in the Volga region...

...The following year, if he has not appeared, the bottles containing the blood are destroyed...

...They declared war on the Mordvas after the latter had refused to deliver the bishop into their hands, drove them back to their dark caverns, and took the old missionary prisoner...

...All this will seem very strange to our matter-of-fact Americans, but Asia is still the land of mystery, where the strangest things happen, and the Volga and Ural regions are more Asiatic than European...

...This was required by the law in pre-Bolshevik days because, as I have said, the Mordvas were officially Christians and Orthodox...

...This shroud is supposed to be for the evil spirits whose influence might wreck the happiness of the marriage...

...There is something much more curious and interesting about the Mordvas, which is connected with their national history...

...There is a tradition that these passages extend through and under the Urals, to those steppes of Asia out of which emerged Genghiz Khan and Tamerlane in their march toward the conquest of Europe...

...After they have recited a list of their sins, the confessor leads them to the altar, and there kills in their presence a hen, or some other small animal, by cutting its throat...

...They conformed to the law, but considered it a pure formality, and believed only in the ceremonies performed by their own priests...

...Other religious customs which they observe are also of a Catholic origin...

...In their subterranean and secret temples, they venerate their idols in almost the same way as Catholics venerate relics of saints...

...after this it is solemnly buried in the village churchyard, with the same ceremonies that are used for the funeral of human beings...

...All this, however, is superstition, combined with idolatry...

...At the farthest end stood an altar of stone, on which two high candles were lighted...

...The others- the Mordvas-settled further east, toward the Volga...

...The law compelled them to baptize their children, to marry in Greek Orthodox churches, and to be buried by Greek Orthodox priests...

...The latter-and this was also another remnant of their early Catholic teachings-were compelled to remain single as long as they were priests...

...They were excellent farmers and hard workers, with a few really intelligent and well-instructed fellows among them...

...After cruelly torturing him they sent him back, blinded and without hands, to his people...

...THE TEMPLES OF THE MORDVAS By CATHERINE RADZIWILL THE war fought by the Soviets against religion is not confined to Christians, but is carried on likewise against the Musselmen, Buddhists and Jews...

...One of them, the bishop of the Polish town of Plock in the twelfth century, conceived the idea of going to seek what was left of his people in the distant lands whither they had fled, and converting them to Christianity...

...There is another Mordva superstition alive at the present moment, which is connected with marriage celebrations of girls (not widows...

...In addition to their idols that are never shown to people of another faith, their temples contain crude pictures and paintings which are distinctly Catholic in their character, and do not bear the slightest resemblance to Greek ikons...

...And who knows whether this lamp which used to burn perpetually before the altar of Ordou, will not one day lead the pagan Mordvas toward the real light represented by the Christian faith and Christian doctrines, in spite of Bolsheviks and the war which they have declared against religion and its teachings...

...The only people who seem to have found grace in the eyes of the disciples of Lenin are the few pagan tribes still left in Russia...

...My guide had told me to stoop down when he laid his hands upon my shoulders, but so suddenly did we come upon the very narrow underground passage, and so quickly did he guide me through it, that he almost forced me into it...

...Some of them were absolutely the same as those we see in Catholic churches, though they were supposed to represent episodes in the lives of the Mordvas' holy saints, of whom they have many, or in that of Ordou, as their principal idol is called...

...There is no celebration of Holy Communion, unless one can call so the annual ceremony I have already described, which takes place on Saint John's Eve...

...They are a tribe of Finnish origin which formerly inhabited the region known to this day as Polesia-a part of the present Lithuania...

...And it is only after these ceremonies are over that the death is announced, and the body given over to the Greek Orthodox Church for burial...

...Another Finnish tribe, the Tcheremisses, who had always been at variance with the Mordvas, heard about this strange and mysterious old man who was trying to shake the popular faith in the idols of their forefathers, and determined to punish him...