In Dante's Inferno, heretics are tormented in red-hot cramped coffins. This means that the sin of heretics is their narrowness, their one-sidedness. Everywhere outside of Orthodoxy one senses precisely narrowness, a kind of shortsightedness. For example, Western heretics care so much about the comfort of their own homes, how many styles they have invented more conveniently than one another! But for God's dwelling place they invented the Gothic, completely uncomfortable, gloomy, dry and dead. Obviously, life departed from religion when heretics departed from the Church. It is remarkable that Gothic developed during the reign of scholasticism. It seems to me, dear Friend, that Gothic and Scholasticism are related to each other. The scholastic system, like the Cologne Cathedral, can be complex and harmonious: there are many trifles in it, but all these trifles are connected with each other, hold on to each other. But if you approach any scholastic system, you will see that, for all its harmony, it is lifeless, it smells of death. Gothic is scholasticism in stone. Scholasticism among the Western heretics replaced religious life with its diverse colors of feeling, with its beautiful outbursts of will. In Western religious thinking, scholasticism dominates: Catholics study according to Thomas Aquinas, Protestants took up religious thinking for his own sake, without any connection with life. Even ancient church writers reproached heretics for rationalism and Western heretics for rationalism, while Orthodox theologians, beginning with A.S. Khomyakov, began to reproach them. It is precisely this rationalization of Christian life, I think, that the Gothic architecture of Western churches also preaches. For this, Western heretics should be tortured in cramped coffins. It is impossible to imagine narrower and more one-sided people than rationalists.

It is not in vain, my friend, that some art historians have called the Gothic style the German style; the French disowned this style as early as the XVIII century. But not in vain, because rationalism seems to have captured the German soul more than any other. It was the Germans who decided to replace theology with theological science. It was the Germans who in philosophy did not spare peace for the sake of the triumph of abstract thought. The typical German Kant turned the whole world into an incomprehensible and incomprehensible Ding an sich [2]. A Slav is not a rationalist by nature. The Slav is disgusted with rationalism. Do you remember how Tolstoy writes about self-confidence? "Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract idea, science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of perfect truth... The German is the most self-confident of all, and the hardest of all, and the most disgusting of all, because he imagines that he knows the truth, the science which he himself has invented, but which for him is the absolute truth" (War and Peace). Here I hear the voice of a Slav. It is only a pity that Tolstoy himself, as a religious false teacher, took himself entirely on the soil of German rationalism, German science. In "The Unification and Translation of the Four Gospels" he has on almost every page a German named Reiss, one of the unimportant German scholars. It is no accident, I think, that the Gothic style could not take root in Slavic countries: it certainly does not fit Orthodoxy, and even without Orthodoxy it will not find a sympathetic response in the Slavic soul. The Czechs in Prague have a Gothic cathedral, but there is no love for it: it is extremely neglected and so crowded with buildings that it can only be seen from a distance.

But You, my dear Friend, may object to me: "Is it possible that the whole religious life in the West has been replaced by scholasticism and rationalism? Oh, undoubtedly there is, but only mysticism and religious feeling in the West bear an unhealthy imprint.

And you know, my friend, it seems to me that the shades of this unhealthy feeling, by the way, are also materialized in the Gothic style. We can find these shades with You in the same Cologne Cathedral. Where did Gothic come from? To this question some answered as follows: "The primary seed of Gothic is in the dense forests of Gaul and Germany, with their intertwining peaks, with their high and smooth trunks, with their mysterious twilight." Chateaubriand, for example, said that in Gothic temples there is the same religious horror and mystery as in a dense forest. Religious horror... I like this expression; It conveys the impression of Gothic temples well. Take a look at the interior of Cologne Cathedral. Imagine that you are there, that twilight is thickening behind the patterned windows. Only a lamp flickers on the altar. The vaulted ceiling is completely immersed in darkness. Involuntarily, religious horror will creep into the soul...

I can recommend to You, Friend, one experience. Look more closely and longer at the image of the interior of the Cologne Cathedral. Even the picture breathes some kind of spirit of dreaminess. Isn't it? And in the cathedral itself, just sit on a bench closer to the column - now dreaminess will attack. And I imagine how it is possible to sit in the semi-darkness of the cathedral! The sounds of the organ are rushing, drowning in the darkness under the arches, echoing in the far corners of the temple behind the rows of bizarre columns... Horror and dreaminess - this, I think, is what should fill the soul of a person praying in a Gothic temple! Remember how Victor Hugo describes "Notre Dame de Paris"! There are also a lot of creepy and dreamy, sometimes even scary things.

Slavish fear and sentimental daydreaming are what materialized in the Gothic style of Cologne Cathedral, but it is precisely these features that distinguish Western religious feeling, Western religious mysticism. Lately, we have been remembering Francis of Assisi more often than we should. But I personally cannot stand the sentimentalism of this Western mystic with his "sister swallows" and so on. Take St. Sergius. How different his holy soul is from the enthusiastic and sentimental soul of Francis! Thanks to M.V. Lodyzhensky for the fact that in his mystical trilogy he showed the superiority of the soul of St. Seraphim over the soul of Francis ("Invisible Light"). Our saints have not a shadow of dreaminess, let alone "religious horror." And in general, in this point, Russian Orthodox psychology differs significantly from Western, heretical psychology. Idealism and realism, positivism and mysticism are combined together in the Russian soul. This was also noted as a feature of the Russian soul by the Frenchman Leroy-Beaulieu (L'empire des tsars et les russes. Vol. III). It is not without reason that sometimes Russian monasteries lead an excellent household and conduct them in simplicity of heart, without feeling any collisions or doubts.

Perhaps You, dear Friend, will think: "What is wrong if the Gothic style produces religious horror?" But I think that religious horror should not be the goal of a Christian church at all. After all, the church is the place of the liturgical assembly of the Church, here the "sacrament of assembly or communion" takes place, as the author of the work "On the Church Hierarchy" says. Any communication, of course, drives away any "horror" from the soul. There is absolutely no sentimentality in the church services, in the church melodies of the sacred Osmoglas. But how much of this disgusting sentimentality there is in various sectarian meetings! It's sickening to listen to!

I will tell you, Friend, frankly that I do not like huge churches, like, for example, St. Isaac's Cathedral, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where thousands gather and where, therefore, there is no "parish" and where the sacrament of assembly does not take place. It is dogmatically absurd when the divine service turns into some kind of spectacle, when the pilgrims only observe what is happening, remaining completely alien to each other. It is a completely different matter when our own people gather, when our father serves. And you especially experience the sacrament of gathering in sparsely populated monasteries, for example, in the Paraclete Desert, where everyone has his own place at the service and everyone gathers for their own. In such monastic churches, the sacrament of the Church, the sacrament of assembly, is perceptibly performed, but in the "Isaacs" this sacrament is in no way felt as if it does not exist at all. But we began to build huge churches again following the example of Western heretics, and earlier, for example, in Moscow, we preferred to build "forty forty" churches, even if they were not huge.

So, my friend, this is what the Cologne Cathedral is talking about, if you look at it more closely. He speaks of the rationalization of Christianity in the West; he speaks of the dreaminess of the morbid mysticism of the West. Rationalism absolutely does not tolerate ecclesiastical splendor; he wants temples to be as dry and lifeless as logical schemes, and to turn driven and suppressed feeling into stunted sentimentalism. In rationalism, both Catholicism and Protestantism are equal. And here, in my opinion, is a remarkable fact: they have the same church architecture, and the interior of the churches is equally colorless, although the Catholics recognize the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which forever blessed all ecclesiastical splendor. Rationalism fundamentally undermines the main nerve of Christianity: the ideal of the deification of human nature, which is affirmed in the incarnation of the Son of God. The Orthodox Church lives by this ideal, which is also evidenced by our ecclesiastical splendor. After all, according to the thought of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, "the image of icon life-painting" serves us "to assure the true, and not imaginary, incarnation of God the Word." Protestants rejected the dogma of the veneration of icons, and now they are not at all sure of the true incarnation of God the Word. What did the Protestants turn Christianity itself into? They turned it into a kind of doctrinal system, which, moreover, everyone can compose in his own way. Protestantism is Christianity without Christ, the Son of God, it is the religion of Jesus of Nazareth. But the Catholics also turned Christianity into a bargaining deal with God: good Catholics do "good deeds" and present to the Lord God a detailed invoice for payment in the form of a "reward". Just as in earthly life a penalty under a writ of execution can be transferred to another, so, according to the Catholic faith, one can act in the matter of salvation: one can purchase someone else's writ of execution, and the Lord God is obliged to pay the due "reward" in full. There is no place for the true incarnation of God the Word here either.

It's an amazing thing.. I have seen many Catholic and Protestant churches and involuntarily thought: "You, gentlemen heretics, have decorated your churches with various architectural curls, your altars sometimes look like the windows of furniture stores - well, tell me frankly, is this really better than our icon painting?" No, it is precisely the West's perversion of Christianity itself, the obscuration and even the rejection of the true Christian ideal. If Christianity is a scholastic system, then Christian meetings need a more or less comfortable audience, and not a temple. All Protestant, especially Reformed churches are similar to auditoriums: benches and pulpit - that's all the interior decoration. You know, my friend, sometimes the Western temples have terrified me; I was indignant with all my soul when I saw these fruits of religious poverty, religious misery. I will tell you about one of my similar experiences. It was in Dresden. Sunday. I hear the bells ringing all over the city, as if in some of our cities. Although the ringing was pitiful, pitiful and cracked, not our solemn, majestic, soul-lifting, it still became pleasant: even heretics, they say, revere the Lord! He went to mass in an Orthodox church. It is especially pleasant to hear an Orthodox service "in a foreign land." After Mass, I went to the city center by tram. I saw that almost the entire carriage was filled with pilgrims of the Orthodox church. Only Russian speech is heard. Here sits a priest in a cassock with a pectoral cross. (At that time I was still in indecent clothes, that is, in secular clothes!) It was so nice! I drove to Altmarkt. There is a large Protestant Kirche nearby. I think it's Frauenkirche. However, I don't remember exactly now. I walk through the door. The stairs lead up. Climb. What then? Just like, for example, in the Moscow Bolshoi Theater, when you go up to the gallery. You go up to the floor - the door. Another floor - again the door. I still do not dare to enter, but I have already climbed high - I think to the third floor. He opened the door and entered. What did it turn out to be? I found myself on the balcony of the second tier. The huge church is built in exactly the same way as theaters are arranged. At the bottom there is a parterre, and on the sides there are balconies in several tiers. In some places, not very densely, there are visitors. Near one of the balconies there is a high pulpit, and on it the preacher-pastor delivers a sermon, as if he were giving a lecture in a well-equipped auditorium. I remember well, such pity seized me for the unfortunate heretics who had so devastated and discolored Christianity, made it deadly boring! There are no sacred images in the temple: balconies, armchairs and a pulpit - that's all, nothing more. Oh, how I felt at that time the incomparable superiority of Holy Orthodoxy.

Yes, in the West, churches are constantly turning if not into theaters, then into concert halls. You enter the church and see posters hanging on the porch. What the? It turns out that concerts are given in churches on certain days after the service. Organist so-and-so, who came from so-and-so. Everything has been announced. One concert - the price is 1 mark or franc, 12 concerts - the price is 10 marks or francs. I especially remember one such concert, which I heard in the beautiful Swiss town of Interlaken at the foot of the Jungfrau. It was announced that the London organist was giving a concert on a huge organ driven by an electric motor. After the evening service, when the people had left without a stowaway, the altar boys walked between the benches and turned their backs to the altar. Just like in some Moscow trams, when you need to go in the opposite direction. Those who remained sat down to listen to the concert with their faces to the organ and their backs to the altar. My surprise increased even more when, having bought the program, I saw the numbers of secular singing. In each concert, for example, the program included the piece "Sturm" ("Tempest"), I don't know which composer. The thing is really magnificent, and in the powerful performance of the organ it is downright delightful. I think You, my Friend, who understand music a thousand times more than I do, would have liked this piece very much. I wish I could listen to it with you, experience and feel together this magnificent sea of sounds - now mighty and menacing, like the waves of a fiercely stormy sea, now quietly roaring, like the sound of a distant sea, when the clouds have disappeared, the sun has come out, and the sea does not yet want to calm down. Yes, but to listen to it in church... You need to forget in advance that you are in church. In the West, this is easy to do. In all Western churches, beginning with the Cologne Cathedral, it is easy to forget about the church, and precisely because, as I said at the beginning of my letter, they lack God, lack holiness. In our Orthodox churches, you can't forget about God. Try to face the west in our Trinity Cathedral or in our academic church - instead of the iconostasis you will see a formidable picture of the Last Judgment. When you see this picture, you will not dream of a musical "Tempest", but rather think about how to calm the storm of passions in your soul and disperse the black clouds of sin.

Letter Four. Divine service

It was on the picturesque shores of the wondrous Lake Geneva, in Lausanne...