Kitabı oku: «History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)», sayfa 14
As far back as 1772, when the first Hasidic societies were secretly organized in Lithuania, and several of their leaders were discovered in Vilna, the rabbinical Kahal court of that city pronounced, with the permission of Elijah Gaon, the herem against the sectarians. From Vilna circulars were sent out to the rabbis of other communities, calling upon them to wage war against the "godless sect." In many towns of Lithuania the Hasidim became the object of persecution. The rabbis of Galicia, having been forewarned from Vilna, followed suit, and at a meeting held in Brody, during the local fair, issued a most rigorous herem against every Jew following the Hasidic liturgy, dressing in white on Saturdays and holidays,205 and in general participating in the conventicles of the Hasidim.
We have already had occasion206 to refer to the work of the Hasidic apostle Jacob Joseph Cohen (Toldoth Ya`kob Yoseph), which for the first time reproduced the sayings of Besht, and, by way of comment, indulged in attacks upon the scholastic "pseudo-wisdom" of the rabbis. Cohen's work, which appeared in 1780, once more stirred the rabbinical world. From Vilna the signal was given for a new campaign against the Hasidim. The rabbis of Lithuania, assembling in 1781 at the fair of Zelva, in the Government of Grodno, issued appeals to all Jewish communities, demanding the severest possible penalties for "the dishonorable followers of Besht, the destroyer of Israel." All orthodox Jews were called upon to ostracize the Hasidim socially, to regard them as infidels, to shun all contact and avoid intermarriage with them, and to refrain from burying their dead. The opponents of the Hasidim called themselves Mithnagdim, "Protestants," and persecuted them everywhere as dangerous schismatics.
The formation of important Hasidic societies in White Russia, under the leadership of Zalman Shneorsohn, increased the agitation of the Mithnagdim. At the rabbinical conferences held in Moghilev and Shklov severe measures were adopted against the Hasidim, and their leader was proclaimed a heretic. In vain did Zalman defend himself, and, in his epistles to the rabbis, demonstrate his Orthodoxy. In vain did he travel to Vilna to obtain a personal interview with Elijah Gaon and remove the stain of heresy from himself and his followers. The stern Gaon refused even to see the exponent of heterodoxy. At the very end of the eighteenth century the strife of parties in Russian Jewry became more and more accentuated, and finally led, as we shall see later,207 to the interference of the Russian Government.
While warring with one another, Rabbinism and Hasidism found a point of contact in their common hatred of the new Enlightenment, which proceeded from the Mendelssohn circle in Berlin. If Rabbinism opposed secular knowledge actively, looking upon it as a competitor who contested its own spiritual monopoly, Hasidism opposed it passively, with its whole being, prompted by an irresistible leaning towards mental drowsiness and "pious fraud." Hasidism and its inseparable companion Tzaddikism, the products of a mystical outlook on life, were powerless against cold logical reasoning. It stands to reason that the Tzaddiks were even more hostile towards secular learning than the rabbis. True, Rabbinism had immersed the Jewish mind in the stagnant waters of scholasticism, but Hasidism, in its further development, endeavored altogether to lull rational thinking to sleep, and to cultivate, to an excessive degree, the religious imagination at its expense. The new cultural movement which had arisen among the Jews of Germany had no chance of penetrating into this dark realm, which was guarded on the one hand by scholasticism and on the other by mysticism. The few isolated individuals in Polish Jewry who manifested a leaning towards secular culture were forced to go abroad, primarily to Berlin.
One of these rare fugitives from the realm of darkness was Solomon Maimon (1754-1800). He was born the son of a village arendar in Lithuania, near Nesvizh, in the Government of Minsk, where he received a Talmudic education, and where, having scarcely reached the age of twelve, he was married off by his old-fashioned parents. However, unlike thousands of other Jewish lads, he managed to escape spiritual death in the mire of everyday life. Endowed with a searching mind, Solomon Maimon was driven constantly onward in his mental development. From the Talmud he passed to the Cabala, in which at one time he was completely absorbed. From the Cabala he made a sudden leap to the religious philosophy of Maimonides and other medieval Jewish rationalists. His youthful intellect was eager for new impressions, and these his immediate surroundings failed to give him. In 1777 Maimon left home and family, and went to Germany to acquire secular culture. He found himself first in Königsberg, and then proceeded to Berlin, Posen, Hamburg, and Breslau, enduring all kinds of suffering, and tasting to the full the bitterness of a wanderer's life in a strange land. In Berlin he came in contact with Mendelssohn and his circle, rapidly acquired a knowledge of German literature and science, and made a deep study of philosophy, particularly of the system of Kant.
The sudden transition from rabbinic scholasticism to the "Critical Philosophy" of Germany, and from the primitive existence of a Lithuanian Jew to the free life of an educated European, destroyed Maimon's mental equilibrium. He fell a prey to skepticism and unbelief, denying the foundations of all religion and morality, and led a disorderly life, which made his best friends turn from him. In his philosophic criticism, Maimon went much further than Kant. In 1790 he published in German "A Tentative Investigation of Transcendental Philosophy," and this book was followed by a number of writings dealing with metaphysics and logic. Kant, on reading his first book, made the remark: "No one among my opponents has grasped the essence of my system as profoundly as Maimon, nor are there altogether many men endowed with so refined and penetrating a mind in questions so abstract and complex." In 1792 Solomon Maimon published his "Autobiography" (Lebensgeschichte), a remarkable book, in which he vividly describes the conditions of life and the ideas prevalent among Polish Lithuanian Jews as well as his own sad Odyssey. The Autobiography made a profound impression upon educated Christians, among others on Goethe and Schiller. The last years of his life Maimon spent in Silesia, on the estate of his friend Count Kalkreuth, where he continued his philosophic studies. He died in 1800, and was buried in Glogau. During the last years of his life Maimon was completely estranged from Judaism. He contributed next to nothing to the enlightenment of his fellow-Jews, the only work written by him in Hebrew being an uncompleted commentary on Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed." Having escaped the realm of darkness, he no more returned thither. Nor perhaps was he able to do so without risking the same fate as Uriel Acosta.
The time for cultural rejuvenation had not yet arrived for the Jews of Poland and Lithuania. Least of all could such a rejuvenation have been stimulated by the change in their external, political situation: the transfer of the bulk of the Jewish population from the power of disintegrating Poland to that of Russia, a country even less civilized and built upon the foundations of autocracy and serfdom.
CHAPTER VII
THE RUSSIAN QUARANTINE AGAINST JEWS (TILL 1772)
1. The Anti-Jewish Attitude of Muscovy during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
The Empire of Muscovy, shut off from Western Europe by a Chinese – or, more correctly, Byzantine – wall, maintained during the sixteenth century its attitude of utmost prejudice towards the Jews, and refused to admit them into its borders. This prejudice was part of the general disfavor with which the Russian people of that period, imbued as it was with the traditions of Tataric-Byzantine culture, looked upon foreigners or "infidels." But the prejudice against the Jews was fed, in addition, from a specific source. The recollection of the "Judaizing heresy" which had struck terror to the hearts of the pious Muscovites at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century208 had not yet died out. The Jews were regarded as dangerous magicians and seducers, superstitious rumors ascribing all possible crimes to them. The ambassador of the Muscovite Grand Duke, Basil III., at Rome, observed in 1526 to the Italian scholar Paolo Giovio: "The Muscovite people dread no one more than the Jews, and do not admit them into their borders."
Jewish merchants of Poland and Lithuania visited occasionally, in connection with their business affairs, the border city Smolensk, but they had no permanent residence there. From time to time they would carry their goods even into the capital, Moscow, although such daring did not always pass unpunished. About 1545 the goods imported by Jewish merchants from Brest-Litovsk to Moscow were burned there, on which occasion the Muscovite ambassador called the attention of the Polish Government to the fact that the Jews had imported forbidden merchandise to Russia, though they had not even the right to travel thither. In 1550 the Polish King Sigismund Augustus addressed a "charter" to Tzar Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV.), demanding the admission of Lithuanian Jews into Russia for business purposes, by virtue of the former commercial treaties between the two countries. Ivan IV. rejected this demand in resolute terms:
It is not convenient to allow Jews to come with their goods to Russia, since many evils result from them. For they import poisonous herbs [medicines] into our realm, and lead astray the Russians from Christianity. Therefore he, the [Polish] King, should no more write about these Jews.
Ivan the Terrible soon had occasion to demonstrate concretely that he was not inclined to tolerate Jews in his domains. When, in 1563, the Russian troops occupied the Polish border city Polotzk,209 the Tzar gave orders to have all local Jews converted to the Greek Orthodox faith, and those who refused baptism drowned in the Dvina. His attitude towards the Poles was more indulgent. He contented himself in their case with taking them captive and demolishing their churches. Fortunately a few years later, in 1579, Polotzk was restored to Poland through the bravery of Stephen Batory, the protector of the Jews.
These primitive forms of denominational politics continued for a long time to prevail in Muscovy. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania managed, though illegally, to visit the capital in the interest of their business. With the influx of Poles into Moscow during the so-called "period of unrest," the interregnum preceding the establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613, a goodly number of Jews penetrated into Russia. The Muscovites became alarmed, and their apprehensions found expression in 1610, when the noblemen of Moscow were conducting negotiations with Poland looking to the election of the Polish Crown Prince Vladislav to the Russian throne. An agreement was concluded, consisting of twenty clauses, setting forth the conditions on which the noblemen were willing to vote for Vladislav. The fourth clause of this agreement runs as follows:
No churches or temples of the Latin or any other faith shall be allowed in Russia. No one shall be induced to adopt the Roman or any other religion, and the Jews shall not be allowed to enter the Muscovite Empire either on business or in connection with any other affairs.
In these circumstances the Jews were deprived of all opportunity to develop commercial life in the reactionary Empire. Forty years later this same Empire pushed its way into the territories of Poland and Lithuania, which were populated by Jews, and the policy of Muscovy was destined to reveal its creative genius in the domain of the Jewish question.
The first contact of the Muscovite Empire with large Jewish masses took place when the province of Little Russia was annexed by Tzar Alexis Michaelovich in 1654. When the Russian troops, allied with the Cossacks, overran White Russia, Lithuania, and the Ukraina, they were struck by the undreamed-of spectacle of cities in which entire quarters were populated by Jews, a strange people about which the unenlightened Muscovites knew nothing except that once upon a time they had crucified Christ, and for this reason were not allowed to enter pious, Greek Orthodox Russia. Alexis Michaelovich and his military commanders began after their own fashion to play the masters in the temporarily occupied Polish provinces. In Vilna and Moghilev the Jews were murdered, and those who survived were expelled. In Vitebsk the Jews were made prisoners of war, while in other cities they were assaulted and plundered.210
As a result the Muscovite Empire soon found within its precincts a strangely composed Jewish population, consisting of prisoners of war, who had been carried off principally from the border towns of the Government of Moghilev, and had been deported to the central provinces of Russia, and in some cases even as far as Siberia. By the Peace of Andrusovo, concluded in 1667 between Russia and Poland, the prisoners of war of both countries were given their freedom, but the captive Jews were allowed to remain in Muscovy. These Jews formed the nucleus of a small Jewish colony in Moscow, which grew up gradually, and in which occasionally even converts were to be found. It seems that with the aid of these "legal" Jewish residents other "illegal" Jews, from the neighboring regions of Lithuania and White Russia, managed to penetrate to Moscow. A few Jewish merchants, particularly those trading in cloth, succeeded in obtaining an official permit, the so-called "red ticket," to visit the capital. However, in 1676 the prohibition against Jews entering Moscow was renewed. Only in the portion of the Ukraina which had been annexed by Russia, in the provinces of Chernigov and Poltava, and a part of the province of Kiev, there could still be found small groups of Jews who had survived the Cossack massacres of 1648. Moreover, from the Polish section of the Ukraina, Jews occasionally came on business into these Cossack districts, notwithstanding the fact that, according to Russian law, the Jews were barred from residing within the borders of Little Russia.
2. The Jews under Peter I. and His Successors
This treatment of the Jews did not improve even in the new Russia, in which Peter the Great, the Tzar-Reformer, "had broken through a window into Europe." True, Peter's reforms effected a change for the better in the attitude of the isolated, unenlightened Empire towards foreigners, but this change did not extend to the Jews. We know of no laws enacted during his reign which might illustrate the views of the new Government on the Jewish question. There is reason to believe that the Tzar, in allowing the former enactments against the admission of Jews into Russia to remain in force, took into account the primitive habits and prejudices of his people. A contemporary witness narrates that, in 1698, during Peter's stay in Holland, the Jews of Amsterdam requested the burgomaster Witsen to petition the Tzar concerning the admission of their coreligionists into Russia. After listening to the convincing arguments of Witsen, with whom he was on a very friendly footing, Peter replied:
My dear Witsen, you know the Jews, and you know their character and habits; you also know the Russians. I know both, and believe me, the time has not yet come to unite the two nationalities. Tell the Jews that I am obliged to them for their proposition, and that I realize how advantageous their services would be to me, but that I should have to pity them were they to live in the midst of the Russians.
Discounting the element of anecdote in this story, we may reasonably assume that Peter did not think it entirely harmless for the Jewish emigrants to settle among the benighted Russian masses, which had been accustomed to look upon the Jew as some kind of sea-monster, and as an infidel and Christ-killer. It is possible that Peter was prompted by similar considerations when he refused to admit the Jews into the central provinces of Russia.
However, from another source we learn that the "reformer" of Russia was not free from anti-Jewish prejudices, though they were not always of a religious nature.
While inviting skilful foreigners from all over – says the Russian historian Solovyov – Peter made a permanent exception but for one people – the Jews. "I prefer," he was wont to say, "to see in our midst nations professing Mohammedanism and paganism rather than Jews. They are rogues and cheats. It is my endeavor to eradicate evil and not to multiply it. They shall not be allowed either to live or to trade in Russia, whatever efforts they may make, and however much they may try to bribe those near me."
Of course, only a goodly dose of anti-Semitic bias could prompt a view which regards in this light the economic activity of the Jews among the Russian merchants, those same merchants who had of yore given expression to their commercial principles in the well-known Russian dictum, "If you don't cheat, you don't sell."
It is possible that Peter was not unfamiliar with anti-Jewish prejudices of a more objectionable kind. In 1702 reports were received in Moscow from Little Russia, that in the town of Gorodnya, near Chernigov, "the Jews had tortured a Christian to death, and had sent his blood to a number of Jews in Little Russian towns." The descendants of Khmelnitzki had evidently succeeded in importing into Russia what was at that time a fashionable article in Poland, the charge of ritual murder, and these obscure rumors may have affected injuriously the attitude of the Russian Tzar towards the Jews.
On the other hand, we are informed that, during the Russo-Swedish War, when the Russian army was operating on the Polish border territory, populated by Jews, Peter the Great refrained from repeating the pogrom experiments of his father, Alexis Michaelovich. In August, 1708, shortly before the celebrated battle at Lesnaya, in White Russia, he checked a military riot against the Jews which had been started in Mstislavl. A brief Hebrew entry in the local Kahal journal, or Pinkes, runs as follows:
On the twenty-eighth of Elul, in the year 5468, there came the Cæsar, who is called the Tzar of Muscovy, by the name of Peter, the son of Alexis, with his whole suite, an immense, numberless host. Robbers and murderers from among his people fell upon us, without his knowledge, and it almost came to bloodshed. And if the Lord Almighty had not put it into the heart of the Tzar to enter our synagogue in his own person, blood would certainly have been shed. It was only with the help of God that the Tzar saved us, and took revenge for us, by giving orders that thirteen men from among them [the rioters] be immediately hanged, and the land became quiet.
During the last years of his reign, Peter began to admit Jewish financial agents to his new capital, St. Petersburg. One of the most energetic financial agents at that time was the "court Jew" Lipman Levy, a banker from Courland, who attained to particular prominence under Peter's successors.
Under the immediate successors of Peter the Great the "defensive" policy towards the Jews gradually became an "offensive" one. The magnates at the Russian court, who dominated Russia under the label of "The Supreme Secret Council," called attention to the unnecessary proximity of the Jewish colony in Smolensk to the center of the Empire. The district of Smolensk bordering on Poland harbored a group of White Russian Jews, who earned a livelihood by a trade profitable at that time, the lease of excise and customs duties. One of these big tax-farmers, a certain Borukh Leibov (son of Leib), even had the courage to build a synagogue for the few Jews of the village of Zverovich. This aroused the ire of the local Greek Orthodox priest, who in his naïveté was convinced that the establishment of a synagogue would result in diverting his flock from the Church and converting it to Judaism. The inhabitants began to bombard St. Petersburg with their protests, the elders of the Holy Synod became alarmed, the specter of the "Judaizing heresy" once more flitted across their vision, and, as a result, Empress Catherine I. issued, in March, 1727, an ukase211 through the Supreme Secret Council, that Borukh and his associates be removed from their office in connection with the excise and customs duties, and "be deported immediately from Russia beyond the border."
A month later another even stricter ukase was promulgated by the Empress through the Supreme Secret Council, which affected all Jews in the border provinces, particularly those residing in Little Russia. The ukase decreed that "the Jews, both of the male and the female sex, who have settled in the Ukraina and in other Russian cities, be deported immediately from Russia beyond the border, and in no circumstances be admitted into Russia, of which fact they shall in all places be strictly forewarned." The exiles were forbidden to carry gold and silver coins abroad, into the Polish dominions. They were ordered to exchange them for copper money prior to their expulsion. This ukase was a gross violation not only of the ancient rights of the Jews who had been left in Little Russia after its annexation by Muscovy, but also of the autonomy of the province and its elective authorities, the hetmans, to whom the right of initiative belonged in such cases.
The arbitrariness of the central Government called forth the protest of the Little Russian Cossacks, who were otherwise far from friendly to the Jews. In the name of "the Zaporozhian army on both sides of the Dnieper"212 Hetman Daniel Apostol addressed a petition to St. Petersburg, pleading for the admission of traveling Jewish salesmen to the Little Russian fairs, in view of their commercial usefulness. A reply to this petition may be found in an ukase which the Supreme Secret Council issued in 1728, in the name of Emperor Peter II., the latter still being a minor. One of its clauses runs thus:
The Jews are permitted to visit temporarily the fairs of Little Russia for commercial purposes, but they are only allowed to sell their goods wholesale, and not retail, by ells and in pounds. The money taken in from the sale of these goods shall be used to buy other goods. In no circumstances shall they be allowed to carry gold and silver money from Little Russia abroad… The [permanent] residence of the Jews in Little Russia is forbidden by virtue of the ukase of the previous year, 1727.
In this way the Jews who had been illegally deported were now "graciously" granted the right of temporary visits to the fairs. Moreover, even this right was hedged about by severe restrictions, such as the prohibition of retail business, and the compulsion of leaving in the country the money taken in for their goods, for the purpose of equalizing imports and exports.
In 1731, this act of "grace" was extended to the Government of Smolensk, and three years later another concession was wrested from the authorities. The representatives of the "Border Province of Sloboda," the present Government of Kharkov, petitioned the Russian ruler to grant permission to the Jews visiting the fairs to sell their goods not only wholesale but also retail, "by ells and in pounds," in view of the fact that "in the Sloboda regiments there are few business men, and their trade is unsatisfactory." Empress Anna complied with the request in 1774. In the same year the privilege concerning the retail trade of Jews at the fairs was extended to the whole of Little Russia, in compliance with a petition of its Christian inhabitants.
But this avalanche of "favors" and "privileges" – the partial restoration of rights which had been grossly trampled upon – suddenly stopped, and was followed by a series of cruel repressions. The change was prompted by the Muscovite fear of Jews, the traditional dread felt by the Russian people of the specter of "Jewish seduction." An occurrence had taken place which was enough to strike terror to the hearts of people with old Muscovite notions. The above-mentioned tax-farmer of Smolensk, Borukh Leibov, who, even after his expulsion, continued to cross the forbidden Polish-Russian frontier, had occasion, during his stay in Moscow, to come in close contact with Alexander Voznitzin, a retired captain of the navy, and "seduced him." Voznitzin, who was wont to speculate about religious matters, studied the Bible under the guidance of his Jewish friend, and his eyes were opened. He realized that the Biblical doctrine of one God was incompatible with the dogmas of the Greek Church and with the cult of ikons, in which he had been brought up. Voznitzin became convinced of the truth of Judaism, and, having made up his mind to embrace the Jewish religion, he decided to brave the difficulties and dangers which such a step implied. He went to the little town of Dubrovna, in the Government of Moghilev, near Smolensk, where the son of Borukh Leibov resided, to undergo there the ceremony of circumcision and accept the principles and practices of Judaism. Voznitzin's conversion became known, and the Captain, together with his teacher Borukh, were brought to justice. They were conveyed to St. Petersburg, and turned over to the awe-inspiring "Chancellery for Secret Inquisitorial Affairs."
The accused were put on the rack and confessed their "crimes." Voznitzin admitted having embraced "the Jewish law," and having uttered "blasphemous words against the Holy Church," while Borukh Leibov owned that he had "seduced" Voznitzin from the path of Greek Orthodoxy. In addition, Borukh was accused of having, "together with other Jews," predisposed the common people in Smolensk in favor of the Jewish religion, and of having insulted, by word and deed, the local Russian Pope Abramius, in connection with the establishment of a Jewish synagogue in the village of Zverovich. The latter crimes, however, were not investigated further in view of the fact that the conversion of Voznitzin was sufficient to inflict the death penalty on Borukh. The Inquisitorial Court hastened to announce its verdict, basing it upon the "statute" of Tzar Alexis Michaelovich. The report of the Senate elicited in 1738 an Imperial resolution,213 decreeing that "both of them [Voznitzin and Borukh] shall be executed and burned, in order that other ignorant and godless people, witnessing this, shall not turn away from the Christian law, and such seducers as the above-mentioned Jew Borukh shall not dare to lead them astray from the Christian law and convert them to their own laws." The auto-da-fé took place in St. Petersburg, on a public square, in the presence of a large crowd of spectators, on July 15, 1738.
This one isolated incident was sufficient to rekindle in the Government circles of St. Petersburg the inveterate Muscovite hatred against "unbaptized Jews" and to justify further violence against them. It had come to the knowledge of the authorities that, contrary to the ukase of 1727, numerous Jews were still residing in Little Russia, being employed on the estates of the Russian landowners as arendars and innkeepers. It had also been ascertained that the Jews who came from the Polish part of the Ukraina to visit the fairs in many cases settled permanently in Little Russia. The Government found such a state of affairs unendurable. In 1739 the Senate decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Little Russia, whither in recent years they had penetrated "from the other side of the Dnieper." In reply to this Senatorial rescript, the Military Chancellery of Little Russia reported that an immediate expulsion of the Jews was fraught with danger, on account of the war with Turkey, which was going on at that time, "since their present expulsion might be accompanied by spying." The Cabinet of Ministers, acting upon the representation of the Senate, passed the resolution, that "the expulsion of the Jews shall be postponed until the termination of the present Turkish War." When the war was over, Empress Anna issued an ukase, in 1740, ordering the execution of the postponed expulsion. The number of Jews liable to expulsion was found to be 292 of the male sex and 281 of the female sex, who resided on 130 manorial estates, altogether a handful of 573 Jewish souls, who had obtained shelter on the outskirts of Russia.
3. Elizabeth Petrovna and the First Years of Catherine II.
The policy of religious intolerance was practiced assiduously during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna (1741-1761). During the reign of this Empress, who divided her time between church services and court-balls, the persecutions of the adherents of other faiths were intensified. By order of the Holy Synod and the Senate, Greek Orthodoxy began to be disseminated among the pagan nationalities of the East, while those of them who, under the influence of the Tatars, had embraced Mohammedanism, were subjected to fines unless they adopted the religion of the state. In the hope of suppressing the Mohammedan propaganda, orders were given to demolish the mosques in many villages of the Governments of Kazan and Astrakhan. The destruction of the mosques was stopped only by the fear of Turkish reprisals, "in order that this rumor shall not reach those countries in which adherents of the Greek Orthodox persuasion live in the midst of Mohammedans, and that the churches existing there shall not suffer oppression."
The Jews living in the border provinces were subjected to similar treatment: they were expelled with one hand and pushed into the doors of the church with the other. Towards the end of 1741, Elizabeth Petrovna issued a remarkable ukase. Referring to the decree of 1727 concerning the expulsion of Jews, the Empress states that "it has now come to our knowledge that some Jews in our Empire, and particularly in Little Russia, continue to live there under all kinds of pretence, being engaged in business or in keeping inns and taverns, from which circumstance no benefit of any kind, but, coming from such haters of the name of our Savior Christ, only extreme injury, can accrue to our faithful subjects." Hence the Empress "most graciously" commands that
