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<h1> THE GRAND INQUISITOR </h1>
<br/>
<h3> By </h3>
<h2> Feodor Dostoevsky </h2>
<h3> (Translation by H.P. Blavatsky) </h3>
<br/>
<p>[Dedicated by the Translator to those sceptics who clamour so
loudly, both in print and private letters—"Show us the
wonder-working 'Brothers,' let them come out publicly—and we will
believe in them!"]</p>
<br/>
<p>[The following is an extract from M. Dostoevsky's celebrated
novel, The Brothers Karamazof, the last publication from the pen
of the great Russian novelist, who died a few months ago, just as
the concluding chapters appeared in print. Dostoevsky is
beginning to be recognized as one of the ablest and profoundest
among Russian writers. His characters are invariably typical
portraits drawn from various classes of Russian society,
strikingly life-like and realistic to the highest degree. The
following extract is a cutting satire on modern theology
generally and the Roman Catholic religion in particular. The idea
is that Christ revisits earth, coming to Spain at the period of
the Inquisition, and is at once arrested as a heretic by the
Grand Inquisitor. One of the three brothers of the story, Ivan, a
rank materialist and an atheist of the new school, is supposed to
throw this conception into the form of a poem, which he describes
to Alyosha—the youngest of the brothers, a young Christian
mystic brought up by a "saint" in a monastery—as follows:
(—Ed. Theosophist, Nov., 1881)]</p>
<br/><br/>
<p>"Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction,"
laughed Ivan. "Well, then, I mean to place the event described in
the poem in the sixteenth century, an age—as you must have been
told at school—when it was the great fashion among poets to
make the denizens and powers of higher worlds descend on earth
and mix freely with mortals... In France all the notaries'
clerks, and the monks in the cloisters as well, used to give
grand performances, dramatic plays in which long scenes were
enacted by the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ, and even
by God Himself. In those days, everything was very artless and
primitive. An instance of it may be found in Victor Hugo's drama,
Notre Dame de Paris, where, at the Municipal Hall, a play called
Le Bon Jugement de la Tres-sainte et Gracièuse Vierge Marie, is
enacted in honour of Louis XI, in which the Virgin appears
personally to pronounce her 'good judgment.' In Moscow, during
the prepetrean period, performances of nearly the same character,
chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great
favour. Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with
mystical writings, 'verses'—the heroes of which were always
selected from the ranks of angels, saints and other heavenly
citizens answering to the devotional purposes of the age. The
recluses of our monasteries, like the Roman Catholic monks,
passed their time in translating, copying, and even producing
original compositions upon such subjects, and that, remember,
during the Tarter period!... In this connection, I am reminded of
a poem compiled in a convent—a translation from the Greek, of
course—called, 'The Travels of the Mother of God among the
Damned,' with fitting illustrations and a boldness of conception
inferior nowise to that of Dante. The 'Mother of God' visits
hell, in company with the archangel Michael as her cicerone to
guide her through the legions of the 'damned.' She sees them all,
and is witness to their multifarious tortures. Among the many
other exceedingly remarkably varieties of torments—every
category of sinners having its own—there is one especially
worthy of notice, namely a class of the 'damned' sentenced to
gradually sink in a burning lake of brimstone and fire. Those
whose sins cause them to sink so low that they no longer can rise
to the surface are for ever forgotten by God, i.e., they fade out
from the omniscient memory, says the poem—an expression, by the
way, of an extraordinary profundity of thought, when closely
analysed. The Virgin is terribly shocked, and falling down upon
her knees in tears before the throne of God, begs that all she
has seen in hell—all, all without exception, should have their
sentences remitted to them. Her dialogue with God is colossally
interesting. She supplicates, she will not leave Him. And when
God, pointing to the pierced hands and feet of her Son, cries,
'How can I forgive His executioners?' She then commands that all
the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels, should prostrate
themselves with her before the Immutable and Changeless One and
implore Him to change His wrath into mercy and—forgive them
all. The poem closes upon her obtaining from God a compromise, a
kind of yearly respite of tortures between Good Friday and
Trinity, a chorus of the 'damned' singing loud praises to God
from their 'bottomless pit,' thanking and telling Him:</p>
<p class="poem">
Thou art right, O Lord, very right,<br/>
Thou hast condemned us justly.<br/></p>
<p>"My poem is of the same character.</p>
<p>"In it, it is Christ who appears on the scene. True, He says
nothing, but only appears and passes out of sight. Fifteen
centuries have elapsed since He left the world with the distinct
promise to return 'with power and great glory'; fifteen long
centuries since His prophet cried, 'Prepare ye the way of the
Lord!' since He Himself had foretold, while yet on earth, 'Of
that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven
but my Father only.' But Christendom expects Him still. ...</p>
<p>"It waits for Him with the same old faith and the same emotion;
aye, with a far greater faith, for fifteen centuries have rolled
away since the last sign from heaven was sent to man,</p>
<p class="poem">
And blind faith remained alone<br/>
To lull the trusting heart,<br/>
As heav'n would send a sign no more.<br/></p>
<p>"True, again, we have all heard of miracles being wrought ever
since the 'age of miracles' passed away to return no more. We
had, and still have, our saints credited with performing the most
miraculous cures; and, if we can believe their biographers, there
have been those among them who have been personally visited by
the Queen of Heaven. But Satan sleepeth not, and the first germs
of doubt, and ever-increasing unbelief in such wonders, already
had begun to sprout in Christendom as early as the sixteenth
century. It was just at that time that a new and terrible heresy
first made its appearance in the north of Germany.* [*Luther's
reform] A great star 'shining as it were a lamp... fell upon the
fountains waters'... and 'they were made bitter.' This 'heresy'
blasphemously denied 'miracles.' But those who had remained
faithful believed all the more ardently, the tears of mankind
ascended to Him as heretofore, and the Christian world was
expecting Him as confidently as ever; they loved Him and hoped in
Him, thirsted and hungered to suffer and die for Him just as many
of them had done before.... So many centuries had weak, trusting
humanity implored Him, crying with ardent faith and fervour: 'How
long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not come!' So many long
centuries hath it vainly appealed to Him, that at last, in His
inexhaustible compassion, He consenteth to answer the prayer....
He decideth that once more, if it were but for one short hour,
the people—His long-suffering, tortured, fatally sinful, his
loving and child-like, trusting people—shall behold Him again.
The scene of action is placed by me in Spain, at Seville, during
that terrible period of the Inquisition, when, for the greater
glory of God, stakes were flaming all over the country.</p>
<p class="poem">
Burning wicked heretics,<br/>
In grand auto-da-fes.<br/></p>
<p>"This particular visit has, of course, nothing to do with the
promised Advent, when, according to the programme, 'after the
tribulation of those days,' He will appear 'coming in the clouds
of heaven.' For, that 'coming of the Son of Man,' as we are
informed, will take place as suddenly 'as the lightning cometh
out of the east and shineth even unto the west.' No; this once,
He desired to come unknown, and appear among His children, just
when the bones of the heretics, sentenced to be burnt alive, had
commenced crackling at the flaming stakes. Owing to His limitless
mercy, He mixes once more with mortals and in the same form in
which He was wont to appear fifteen centuries ago. He descends,
just at the very moment when before king, courtiers, knights,
cardinals, and the fairest dames of court, before the whole
population of Seville, upwards of a hundred wicked heretics are
being roasted, in a magnificent auto-da-fe ad majorem Dei
gloriam, by the order of the powerful Cardinal Grand Inquisitor.</p>
<p>"He comes silently and unannounced; yet all—how strange—yea,
all recognize Him, at once! The population rushes towards Him as
if propelled by some irresistible force; it surrounds, throngs,
and presses around, it follows Him.... Silently, and with a smile
of boundless compassion upon His lips, He crosses the dense
crowd, and moves softly on. The Sun of Love burns in His heart,
and warm rays of Light, Wisdom and Power beam forth from His
eyes, and pour down their waves upon the swarming multitudes of
the rabble assembled around, making their hearts vibrate with
returning love. He extends His hands over their heads, blesses
them, and from mere contact with Him, aye, even with His
garments, a healing power goes forth. An old man, blind from his
birth, cries, 'Lord, heal me, that I may see Thee!' and the
scales falling off the closed eyes, the blind man beholds Him...
The crowd weeps for joy, and kisses the ground upon which He
treads. Children strew flowers along His path and sing to Him,
'Hosanna!' It is He, it is Himself, they say to each other, it
must be He, it can be none other but He! He pauses at the portal
of the old cathedral, just as a wee white coffin is carried in,
with tears and great lamentations. The lid is off, and in the
coffin lies the body of a fair-child, seven years old, the only
child of an eminent citizen of the city. The little corpse lies
buried in flowers. 'He will raise the child to life!' confidently
shouts the crowd to the weeping mother. The officiating priest
who had come to meet the funeral procession, looks perplexed, and
frowns. A loud cry is suddenly heard, and the bereaved mother
prostrates herself at His feet. 'If it be Thou, then bring back
my child to life!' she cries beseechingly. The procession halts,
and the little coffin is gently lowered at his feet. Divine
compassion beams forth from His eyes, and as He looks at the
child, His lips are heard to whisper once more, 'Talitha
Cumi'—and 'straightway the damsel arose.' The child rises in her
coffin. Her little hands still hold the nosegay of white roses
which after death was placed in them, and, looking round with
large astonished eyes she smiles sweetly .... The crowd is
violently excited. A terrible commotion rages among them, the
populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the
cathedral door, appears the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself....
He is tall, gaunt-looking old man of nearly four-score years and
ten, with a stern, withered face, and deeply sunken eyes, from
the cavity of which glitter two fiery sparks. He has laid aside
his gorgeous cardinal's robes in which he had appeared before the
people at the auto da-fe of the enemies of the Romish Church, and
is now clad in his old, rough, monkish cassock. His sullen
assistants and slaves of the 'holy guard' are following at a
distance. He pauses before the crowd and observes. He has seen
all. He has witnessed the placing of the little coffin at His
feet, the calling back to life. And now, his dark, grim face has
grown still darker; his bushy grey eyebrows nearly meet, and his
sunken eye flashes with sinister light. Slowly raising his
finger, he commands his minions to arrest Him....</p>
<p>"Such is his power over the well-disciplined, submissive and now
trembling people, that the thick crowds immediately give way, and
scattering before the guard, amid dead silence and without one
breath of protest, allow them to lay their sacrilegious hands
upon the stranger and lead Him away.... That same populace, like
one man, now bows its head to the ground before the old
Inquisitor, who blesses it and slowly moves onward. The guards
conduct their prisoner to the ancient building of the Holy
Tribunal; pushing Him into a narrow, gloomy, vaulted prison-cell,
they lock Him in and retire....</p>
<p>"The day wanes, and night—a dark, hot breathless Spanish
night—creeps on and settles upon the city of Seville. The air smells
of laurels and orange blossoms. In the Cimmerian darkness of the
old Tribunal Hall the iron door of the cell is suddenly thrown
open, and the Grand Inquisitor, holding a dark lantern, slowly
stalks into the dungeon. He is alone, and, as the heavy door
closes behind him, he pauses at the threshold, and, for a minute
or two, silently and gloomily scrutinizes the Face before him. At
last approaching with measured steps, he sets his lantern down
upon the table and addresses Him in these words:</p>
<p>"'It is Thou! ... Thou!' ... Receiving no reply, he rapidly
continues: 'Nay, answer not; be silent! ... And what couldst Thou
say? ... I know but too well Thy answer.... Besides, Thou hast no
right to add one syllable to that which was already uttered by
Thee before.... Why shouldst Thou now return, to impede us in our
work? For Thou hast come but for that only, and Thou knowest it
well. But art Thou as well aware of what awaits Thee in the
morning? I do not know, nor do I care to know who thou mayest be:
be it Thou or only thine image, to-morrow I will condemn and burn
Thee on the stake, as the most wicked of all the heretics; and
that same people, who to-day were kissing Thy feet, to-morrow at
one bend of my finger, will rush to add fuel to Thy funeral
pile... Wert Thou aware of this?' he adds, speaking as if in
solemn thought, and never for one instant taking his piercing
glance off the meek Face before him."....</p>
<p>"I can hardly realize the situation described—what is all
this, Ivan?" suddenly interrupted Alyosha, who had remained
silently listening to his brother. "Is this an extravagant fancy,
or some mistake of the old man, an impossible quid pro quo?"</p>
<p>"Let it be the latter, if you like," laughed Ivan, "since modern
realism has so perverted your taste that you feel unable to
realize anything from the world of fancy.... Let it be a quid pro
quo, if you so choose it. Again, the Inquisitor is ninety years
old, and he might have easily gone mad with his one idee fixe of
power; or, it might have as well been a delirious vision, called
forth by dying fancy, overheated by the auto-da-fe of the hundred
heretics in that forenoon.... But what matters for the poem,
whether it was a quid pro quo or an uncontrollable fancy? The
question is, that the old man has to open his heart; that he must
give out his thought at last; and that the hour has come when he
does speak it out, and says loudly that which for ninety years he
has kept secret within his own breast."</p>
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