ESTABLISHED CHURCH 135
were aware that their rights assumed the quality of rather burden-
some duties. The revenues from church lands lost much of their
value with the necessity for rendering strict accounts and the re-
sponsibility for punctual payment of assessments. "It was natural,'*
remarked Dobroklonsky, "that the Synod should feel the great
burden of its administrative authority and responsibility." As Em-
press Elizabeth justly observed, in 1757, "The monasteries, having
no power to make other disbursements except those authorized by
the state, took unnecessary trouble in managing their estates."
Under these conditions it was only a question of time before the
secularization of church property should be complete, and when it
was accomplished, in 1764, it meant only a slight administrative
change. Simultaneously, a new church budget was established
which assigned the sum of 450,000 rubles for the support of the
clergy. The total revenue from the church estates reached three
times this amount, and twenty years after the secularization it grew
to eight times the sum assigned for the support of all the Russian
clergy. So two-thirds, and subsequsntly as much as seven-eighths,
of the church revenue was confiscated and given over to the state.
The only voice of protest coming from the Russian hierarchs was
that of Arsenius Matseievich, which being solitary and belated only
caused him to be punished as an example to others. The days of
Nikon and Joseph of Volotsk were long since gone, but Arsenius
wrote an epitaph for them, inscribing it in charcoal on the wall of
his prison cell: "Blessed be Thou, for Thou hast brought me to
humility."
The humility of the upper and leading stratum of the clergy, as
displayed before the supreme power and its representative, the
Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod, remained a characteristic of
the Russian regime up to the Revolution of 1917. Thus the Rus-
sian church organization was brought into harmony with the
spiritual and ethical standards of the clergy and their congregations,
and it remains to be ascertained only to what extent these standards
corresponded to the church doctrine.
Here, as in the field of church organization, we face a situation
arising from the general course of Russian history, as well as from
the basic principles of the Eastern religious doctrine. While theo-
logical systems might be in error, the church had to be impeccable.