The Icon and the Axe

The final form of "higher order" which the leading Moscow Masons adopted was Prussian Rosicrucianism, into which Schwarz was initiated on a.trip abroad in 1781-2. He had set out as the Russian delegate to the Wilhelmsbad Convention of 1781-2, which had been summoned to try to bring order out of chaos in the higher Masonic orders. Disillusioned with die charlatanism of so much of higher order Masonry, Schwarz fell under the sway of the Prussian Rosicrucian leader, Johann Christoph Wollner, who had also converted Crown Prince Frederick William and was shortly to preside over a purge of rationalistic teachings in the Prussian schools.96 Schwarz was initiated into the Rosicrucian order and empowered to set up his own independent province in Russia, which he called the society of the "Golden-rosed Cross." The central conviction of the "Harmony" group was that science and religion were but two aspects of one truth. As Novikov put it in 1781 in the first issue of his new series of publications for flie university press:

Between faith and reason . . . philosophy and theology there should be no conflict . . . faith does not go against reason . . . does not take from us the savor of life, it demands only the denial of superfluousness.97

For Schwarz's Rosicrucians the world itself was the "supreme temple" of Masonry and their brotherhood the final "theoretical level" for which all other grades of Masonry were mere preliminaries. The attainment of this level involved a flight from the rationalism of the Russian Enlightenment as Novikov clearly indicated in the opening number of his new journal, Twilight Glow, in 1782:

comparing our present position with that of our forefather before the fall who glistened in the noon-day light of wisdom, the light of our reason can hardly be compared even to the twilight glow. . . ,98

The "light of Adam" is, nonetheless, "still within us, only hidden."99 The task is to find it through inner purification, and a dedicated study of the "hieroglyphics" of nature-and of the most ancient history, which still contained some reflections of this lost light. In a series of lectures given in both the university and the lodges, Schwarz sought to provide a guide. Reason, he explained, was only the first and weakest path to the light; feeling (the aesthetic sense of the rose) the second; and revelation (the mystery of the cross) the third. Each led man to the progressively higher stage of knowledge : the curious, the pleasant, and the useful. Following Boehme, Schwarz contended that all of the cosmos was moving in triads toward perfection. Both the triune God (for whom the world was "created out of his own inner essence," as an "endless wish of his unfathomable will") and God's image, man (who also contained a "trinity" of body, mind, and spirit), were moving toward reunion in the ultimate trinity: "the good, the true, and the beautiful."100 In order to help bring "unripe minds" back from Voltairianism, Schwarz and Novikov published a series of mystical tracts in large editions in the early eighties, ranging from Boehme's Path to Christ and Arndt's On True Christianity to such anonymous compilations as The Errors of Reason and The Secrets of the Cross.

The death of Schwarz early in 1784 was caused largely by an excess of ascetic self-discipline in his quest for inner perfection and knowledge. A large crowd of mourners gathered at his funeral even though it was held in a remote village; and a memorial service was also spontaneously organized by his students in Moscow. He played an important innovating role in the development of Russian thought even though he spent less than five of his thirty-three years in Russia and never formally enjoyed noble status. He was in many ways the father of Russian romanticism, with

his deprecation of natural reason, his belief that art was closer to the inner harmony of nature, and his love of twilight, mystery, and chivalric ideals. At the same time he was the first of a long line of German idealistic philosophers to impart to Russia a thirst for philosophic absolutes, insisting that perfection could be realized through the special knowledge and dedication of a select brotherhood. The Moscow Rosicrucians of the eighties began the tradition of semi-secret philosophic circles which became so important in the intellectual life of Russia. They introduced practices which were to become characteristic in varying forms of such circles: assumed names, bonds of friendship and mutual aid, secret discussion and mutual criticism, and an obligatory system of quarterly confession to the grand master of

the order.