Religion

Thematic Tag: Religion

This thematic tag collects diary paragraphs where Marie discusses religion, prayer, God, faith, doubt, church attendance, religious ritual, superstition, and spiritual matters. With 1,548 references across the diary, it is the third most frequently used tag, reflecting how thoroughly religious life permeated Marie's existence -- not as conventional piety, but as a passionate, transactional, deeply personal dialogue with the divine that evolved from a girl's bargaining prayers to a dying woman's desperate pleas for healing.

Overview: Marie's Religious Universe

Marie Bashkirtseff was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church but spent most of her life in predominantly Catholic France and Italy. Her faith was neither conventional piety nor systematic theology. It was volatile, emotional, and above all transactional -- she prayed the way she lived, with fierce intensity, making deals with God, promising reforms in exchange for favors, and raging when prayers went unanswered. She addressed God directly ("Oh! mon Dieu, entends ma priere!"), invoked the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ as personal intercessors, and mixed Orthodox liturgical practice with Catholic church-going, fortune-telling, and superstitious omens. Her diary records every register of religious experience: ecstatic prayer, bargaining, philosophical reflection, doubt, and blasphemous fury.

Marie was also an original theological thinker. At fourteen, she critiqued Catholic and Orthodox idol worship, argued that "Dieu est trop sublime" for statues and painted images, reconciled geological evidence with Biblical creation, and in a marginal note admitted her position was "presque du pantheisme" (September 1873). She debated Darwinism with a young Russian man, dismissed his materialist atheism as immature posturing, yet respected the scientific evidence he cited. Throughout the diary, she maintained a position that was simultaneously devout and intellectually independent -- believing in God with absolute conviction while rejecting most of the apparatus of organized religion.

Religion in the 1870s-80s: Historical Context

The Crisis of Faith in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Marie's lifetime coincided with one of the great crises of European Christianity. Ernest Renan's Vie de Jesus (1863) had portrayed Christ as a historical figure rather than a divine one, scandalizing the faithful and thrilling rationalists -- queues formed outside the publisher's shop in Paris. Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871) challenged the Biblical account of creation. Scientific materialism and positivism, championed by thinkers like Auguste Comte and Emile Littre, offered alternative frameworks for understanding the world. Marie encountered these currents directly: in September 1873, a young Russian visitor named Khalkionoff provoked her by declaring that "les hommes sont des singes degeneres." She argued back fiercely, defending faith while acknowledging geological evidence for the earth's antiquity (009, 1873-09-20).

French Secularization and Anticlericalism

The French Third Republic, established in 1870, pursued an increasingly anticlerical program. The Jules Ferry laws of 1881-82 made primary education free, compulsory, and secular (laique), replacing religious instruction with "moral and civic education" and expelling teaching religious orders from public schools. Earlier decrees (1880-81) had dissolved the Jesuits and other unauthorized congregations. This laicite program built toward the definitive separation of Church and State in 1905. Marie lived through these changes but engaged with them primarily through social rather than legislative observation. Her contempt for a Jesuit priest in Nice -- Pere Lavigne, whom she called "une canaille, un pretre catholique, aristocrate" (May 1873) -- reflected both her Orthodox sensibility and a broader distrust of clerical power over women: "Il influence tellement sur les Francaises que cela fait pitie!"

The Pope as "Prisoner of the Vatican"

When Italian troops captured Rome on 20 September 1870, Pope Pius IX refused to recognize the Kingdom of Italy and declared himself a "prisoner in the Vatican". This Roman Question remained unresolved throughout Marie's lifetime -- the Pope would not set foot outside Vatican walls until the Lateran Treaty of 1929. Marie visited Rome multiple times (1876, 1881) and attended the Russian Orthodox chapel in the embassy there, but the broader Catholic crisis forms a backdrop to her Roman diary entries.

Women and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

In both Catholic France and Orthodox Russia, religion was considered particularly the province of women. The devout wife and mother who managed the family's spiritual life was a social ideal. Marie's mother embodied this pattern -- praying at relics "avec une ferveur sans egale" at the Lavra in Kiev (July 1881). Marie herself was acutely conscious of the gendered dimension: when Khalkionoff dismissed her theological arguments, she recognized the pattern immediately: "Tous ces garcons qui commencent a avoir de la moustache ont ces idees-la, ce sont des petits blancs-becs qui pensent que les femmes ne peuvent pas raisonner" (September 1873). She also addressed her prayers specifically to the Virgin Mary as a woman: "Sainte Vierge Marie, vous qui avez ete femme!" (May 1875).

Russian Orthodoxy: Marie's Faith Tradition

Orthodox Services and the Russian Colony

The Bashkirtseff family attended Russian Orthodox services wherever they lived. In Nice, the first Orthodox church had been established at 6 rue Longchamp in 1859, built at the instigation of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to serve the growing Russian colony wintering on the Riviera. (The grand Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Nicholas, the largest Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Western Europe, was not consecrated until 1912.) Marie's earliest diary entries already record church attendance: "Notre nouvel an. A l'eglise, robe bleue en soie" (January 1873). Her descriptions reveal that Orthodox services in Nice were intimate community affairs -- she notes specific attendees, comments on their clothing, and sometimes talks through the entire service: "Je traversai l'eglise pour rester a cote de Mme Anitchkoff, j'ai cause tout le temps. On ne peut pas prier en public" (October 1873).

In Paris, the family attended the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral at 12 rue Daru in the 8th arrondissement, consecrated in 1861 as the first Russian Orthodox church in France. This was the social center of the Parisian Russian colony, and Easter services there were major events -- the ambassador attended, and the post-midnight Easter supper was an important networking occasion. Marie describes the 1878 Easter vividly: "Le pretre qui nous connait nous a fait envoyer une invitation de l'ambassade pour le souper de Paques qui a lieu apres la messe a deux heures apres minuit" (April 1878).

In Rome, the Orthodox chapel was housed in the Russian embassy itself, "dans le palais de l'ambassade et est tres petite de sorte qu'on y est comme dans un petit salon" (April 1876). In Naples, services were "celebres monstrueusement par un pretre grec dans la chancellerie du Consulat" (April 1877).

Easter (Pâques): The Great Feast

Easter was the most significant religious event in Marie's calendar, and the diary records it nearly every year. Russian Orthodox Easter follows the Julian calendar, typically falling one to five weeks after Western (Catholic/Protestant) Easter. Marie was keenly aware of this difference, sometimes distinguishing "notre jour de Paques" from the local Catholic celebration. The rituals she describes include:

- The Epitaphios/Plashchanitsa procession (Good Friday): An embroidered cloth depicting Christ's burial is carried in procession and placed on a symbolic tomb. The faithful queue to venerate it by kissing. Marie attended this ceremony repeatedly, and it was during the plashchanitsa veneration in April 1873 that she had her vivid "vision" of the Duke of Hamilton: "Quand tout le monde allait baiser la plachtchanitsa je regardais toutes ces figures et tout d'un coup apparut sa figure, mais vivante comme si il etait la" (April 1873).
- Prosphora (communion bread): Marie describes the Empress receiving the prosphora from the priest at a shipboard service in Nice (March 1875).
- Midnight Easter service and supper: The congregation attended a late-night liturgy followed by a festive breaking of the Lenten fast. Marie describes these as major social events for the Russian colony in both Nice and Paris.
- The Easter kiss: The traditional greeting ("Khristos voskrese!" -- Christ is risen!) accompanied by three kisses. Marie records defending herself from the enthusiastic kisses of a host at the 1878 Russian Easter in Paris.

Marie's Easter reflections reveal her emotional range. In 1873, she records simply "Paques. Sainte Fete." In 1874, her tone is bitter: "Comme c'est dommage qu'on n'observe aucune des coutumes. Aujourd'hui c'est Paques, rien n'est change, pas de cadeaux, pas d'amusements, rien. Cela detache de la famille et rend egoiste, dur" (April 1874). In 1876, it becomes a prayer: "C'est Paques: Dieu, en faveur de ce grand jour, m'a-t-il entendue?" By 1880, the Easter service is primarily a social ordeal -- a catastrophic wardrobe malfunction at the midnight service in Paris produces one of the diary's most furious passages.

Kiev: The Holy City

Marie's visit to Kiev in July 1881 produced some of her most sustained religious writing. She describes Kiev as "la ville sainte, 'la mere de toutes les villes russes'" and visits the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, the great cave monastery founded in the eleventh century. Her account of the catacombs -- narrow underground passages lined with the mummified remains of medieval monks in open coffins -- is both fascinated and horrified: "Un saint Jean s'est enterre vivant, debout, ne laissant que la tete et les epaules. Il est mort ainsi et on l'a habille comme les autres et on l'adore... d'un effet tres particulierement effrayant." She notes the monastery's fabulous wealth ("riches comme les Rothschild") and the commercial exploitation of pilgrims ("les cierges, il s'en consomme des quantites prodigieuses"). The visit to the relics of Saint Barbara, where a monk presses a silver crown to her head, prompts a moment of profound religious honesty: "Mais le miracle ne s'est pas fait. Vous riez. Eh bien j'y comptais presque moi" (July 1881).

Marie's Critique of Her Own Tradition

Despite being devoutly Orthodox, Marie was a sharp critic of Orthodox practice. She rejected icon worship: "C'est un sacrilege selon moi. On porte la Sainte Vierge par toute la ville... meme les images et les statues des saints sont un peche. C'est contre ma religion, mais je vois bien les erreurs dans elle. Que Dieu me pardonne!" (July 1873). She contrasted her "pure" faith with her mother's "religion paienne... comme la plupart des gens pieux et... pas tres superieurs" (July 1881). She found the obligatory Lenten fast "superflu et insignifiant" and considered eliminating confession: "Je supprimerai meme la confession..." (April 1874). Yet she confessed at the Orthodox church in Nice and describes the ritual in detail (April 1875).

Marie and Catholicism

Living in France and Italy, Marie was constantly exposed to Catholic practice. Her attitude was a mixture of aesthetic appreciation, intellectual contempt, and social observation. She attended Catholic processions in Nice, visited Catholic churches in Rome as both tourist and art student, and encountered Catholic clergy socially.

Her most scathing portrait of Catholicism appears in May 1873, when she visits Pere Lavigne, a former Jesuit who had built a "splendide eglise a l'avenue de la Gare" in Nice through his fundraising: "Il nous a preche toutes sortes d'absurdites a diner: 'Il faut prier et ne rien faire pour etre au ciel'... Canaille qu'il est!" She was particularly incensed by his influence over young women: "Il influence tellement sur les Francaises que cela fait pitie! Il a meme, par son influence fait que beaucoup de jeunes filles riches ne se marient pas, consacrent leur vie pour des soi-disant bonnes oeuvres et laissent leur fortune au pretre" (May-June 1873).

In Rome, Marie visited Catholic churches primarily as an art lover. She noted the "romantisme religieux" of Spanish churches in Seville: "ces eglises appellent le rendez-vous, on prend de l'eau benite et l'on cherche a qui faire de l'oeil" (October 1881). The Sistine Chapel produced irreverent honesty: after looking at Michelangelo's Last Judgment, she found "que tous ses hommes etaient de la meme couleur, ce qui n'est pas naturel" (February 1876).

Prayer as Negotiation: Marie's Distinctive Style

The most distinctive feature of Marie's religious life is her transactional approach to prayer. She does not pray for spiritual growth or mystical union -- she prays for specific, concrete outcomes, and she frames her prayers as bargains with God. This pattern begins in childhood and persists throughout her life.

The Childhood Prayer (c. 1870)

In the memoir section of her diary, Marie records the prayer she recited nightly as an eleven-year-old in Geneva after the Franco-Prussian War: > "Tous les soirs avant de me coucher, je recitais tout bas cette priere supplementaire: 'Mon Dieu, faites que je sois amie avec Berthe et que j'aie des cavaliers qui me fassent la cour.' Toute la priere etait ainsi concue d'abord le Pater, l'Ave, etc. puis ceci: Mon Dieu, faites que je n'aie jamais la petite verole, que je sois jolie, que j'aie une belle voix, que je sois heureuse en menage et que maman vive longtemps." (000-09) This prayer -- half catechism, half wish-list -- establishes the template for Marie's lifelong approach: standard liturgical formulas followed by personal demands, delivered in whispered secrecy.

Bargaining for Love (1873-76)

During her obsession with the Duke of Hamilton, Marie's prayers become explicitly transactional. She promises God personal reform in exchange for romantic success: > "C'est une promesse que je fais a Dieu. Puisque je desire un bonheur si grand, il faut que je le merite... Je jure donc a Dieu solennellement et sans plus y revenir de faire ce que je dis. Si je manque une seule fois a mon serment, je perds tout." (June 1873) She prays to see the Duke, prays to love the Duke, prays not to see the Duke's mistress, prays for the Duke to marry her. When Hamilton's face appears to her during the plashchanitsa veneration, she takes a marguerite from the altar flowers and uses it for divination: "cette fleur est sainte, elle etait pres de notre Sauveur, je prie Dieu par elle, elle me dira, je l'ai vu lui ici, a l'instant, il m'a apparu" (April 1873). The sacred and the romantic are inseparable.

Bargaining for Legal Victory (1873-75)

Marie also prays with fierce intensity over her family's lawsuits in Russia: > "Oh! mon Dieu, je n'ai d'espoir qu'en Vous! Inspirez-leur de l'energie... Comment puis-je ne pas Vous prier, Vous qui faites tout pour moi! Vous dont je tiens tout! Vous que je ne suis meme pas digne de remercier, et que j'ose prier!" (June 1873)

Bargaining for Health (1880-84)

As Marie's illness progresses, her prayers shift from romantic wishes to desperate pleas for healing. The transactional structure remains, but the stakes are life and death: > "Dieu ne me guerira pas du coup, dans une eglise, non je n'ai rien merite de pareil mais il me prendra en pitie et inspirera un docteur qui me fera du bien... ou enfin avec le temps. Seulement je ne cesserai de le prier." (July 1881) > "Mon Dieu c'est a en devenir folle, ayez pitie de moi mon Dieu." (May 1881) Even her charity becomes transactional. Visiting her dying former governess Collignon, she brings a gift of silk and a shawl, then catches herself: "je me suis decidee a cet immense sacrifice pour la mauvaise pensee que cela me sera rembourse par le ciel. Ces calculs enlevent tout merite" (July 1881).

Faith and Doubt

Marie's faith was robust but not unchallenged. Several distinct strands of doubt appear in the diary.

The Theological Thinker (1873)

At fourteen, Marie articulates a surprisingly sophisticated theological position during a French lesson on the Ten Commandments: > "Les catholiques et les Grecs ont tort, ce sont des idolatres qui adorent des statues et des peintures... Je crois en Dieu, notre Sauveur, la Vierge. Et j'honore les quelques saints. Pas tous, car il y en a des fabriques comme des plum-cakes." (September 1873) She rejects literal Biblical creation but defends God's existence from nature: "On ne prend pas a la lettre que Dieu a cree le monde en six jours. Les elements se formaient pendant des siecles et des siecles et des siecles. Mais Dieu est." She equates God with Nature and writes in the margin: "[En travers: C'est presque du pantheisme.]" She is aware enough of her intellectual position to name it, yet not troubled by the heterodoxy.

The Ecstatic Believer

Marie's most powerful affirmation of faith comes not from theological reasoning but from the experience of prayer itself: > "Hier soir j'ai prie, et si bien que j'en suis tout heureuse. Ce n'est pas toujours que je puis prier, mais hier j'ai prie de coeur, je sentais qu'Il m'entendait, je ne demandais rien, excepte la permission de prier souvent aussi bien. J'etais si heureuse que je sentis mes yeux s'obscurcir et j'ai pleure, mais si bien, si calmement." (December 1873) This is one of the rare occasions when Marie prays without asking for anything -- and she identifies it as the most profound religious experience of her young life.

Doubt in the Face of Illness (1881)

As her hearing deteriorates, Marie confronts the possibility that God may not hear her -- or may not exist as she imagines Him: > "Je n'attache pas d'importance aux eglises, aux reliques, aux messes; non mais je comptais sur les prieres, sur ma priere. Mais j'y compte encore aujourd'hui, je ne suis pas entendue, je le serai peut-etre un jour. Je ne crois qu'en Dieu, mais Dieu est-il le Dieu qui ecoute et s'occupe de ces choses-la?..." (July 1881) This is not atheism -- Marie never stops believing -- but it is a profound theological question: is God personal, or impersonal? Does He intervene, or merely exist? The ellipsis at the end is eloquent.

Self-Aware Unworthiness

A recurring motif is Marie's consciousness that her very act of prayer contains vanity: > "En ecrivant cela, une pensee vaniteuse m'a traverse l'esprit, j'ai pense que c'est agreable a Dieu mais au moment, je reconnus ma misere et le plus insignifiant merite est efface par cette presomption. Meme ces paroles humiliees que je prononce en ce moment sont un peche, parce que, involontairement, je veux meriter quelque chose pour cette humilite." (September 1873) This infinite regression of vanity -- pride in humility, then pride in recognizing pride in humility -- is one of the most psychologically acute passages in the diary.

Superstition and Folk Belief

Marie's religious life coexisted with a vigorous practice of fortune-telling, divination, and superstitious belief. She saw no contradiction between praying to God and reading cards, though the mixture is distinctively hers.

Fortune-Telling and Cartomancy

Marie frequently engaged in cartomancy (card-reading), palmistry, and other forms of divination:
- Her mother consulted "un Juif qui disait la bonne aventure" in Poltava (childhood memoir, 000-07)
- In August 1874, she reads "La clef des songes" (The Key of Dreams), a popular fortune-telling book that included a section on palmistry (chiromancie): "J'ai des lignes admirables, surtout celle de la fortune" (August 1874)
- She "fait la bonne aventure" at cafes (August 1874) and reads playing cards for divination repeatedly: "J'ai fait les cartes" (June 1875), "tire les cartes" (October 1875)
- She wanted to visit a fortune-teller secretly at Mabille dance hall: "Je voulais aller en cachette chez la diseuse de bonne aventure" (August 1875)
- Russian fortune-telling customs also appear: asking a stranger for a name to predict one's future husband -- "une bonne aventure russe" (May 1875)

Omens and Presages

Marie was genuinely frightened by bad omens. In July 1881, as her illness worsened, she catalogued them with real terror: > "Les plus noirs pressentiments me tourmentent et j'ai tellement peur de tous les presages. A la fete de Paul j'ai trouve un cierge sur mon couvert, oublie la parait-il par l'homme qui allumait les lustres... et toutes ces glaces cassees." (July 1881) Broken mirrors appear as a recurring omen throughout the illness period. Marie discusses "choses sinistres a propos de miroirs casses" and "les trois bougies" (three candles -- an omen of death in Russian folk tradition), then asks: "Enfin, est-ce que je vais mourir?" (July 1881). The cards, too, predict death: "Les cartes disent qu'il y aura une mort et me voila affolee d'inquietude" (October 1881).

Christmas and New Year Divinations

Marie recorded Russian fortune-telling customs associated with Christmas and New Year: "Demain c'est notre Noel, on dit qu'il faut deviner l'avenir. Une des divinations, c'est mettre une assiette pleine d'eau sous le lit, et on revera de son futur" (January 1874). She also played "pair ou impair" (odds or evens) games to predict her romantic future, noting the result in the diary margin (September 1873).

Religious Art: Marie's Artist's Eye

As an artist, Marie had a distinctive relationship with religious art -- she judged it by the same standards as any other painting, and her honesty was often irreverent.

Raphael and the Madonne

Marie's verdict on Raphael's religious paintings was devastating: "La Vierge a la Chaise de Raphael ne me plait pas. La figure de la Vierge est fade, le teint pas naturel, l'expression est plutot d'une femme de chambre que de la Sainte Vierge" (September 1875). She found the Madonnas "des sublimes vierges en carton" (October 1881) and preferred the secular Fornarina: "je prefere de beaucoup cette tete a toutes ses madones ensemble" (September 1875). Yet she acknowledged: "Je ne critique pas Raphael, je ne le comprends pas."

Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel

At the Sistine Chapel in February 1876, Marie and her companions "faisons tant de tapage que le custode vient crier silenzio!" After examining the Last Judgment, her critique was characteristically blunt: "tous ses hommes etaient de la meme couleur, ce qui n'est pas naturel." She admired Michelangelo's sculpture more than his painting.

Light and Truth in Religious Painting

Marie was moved by religious art when the technique served the subject. She admired Gherardo delle Notti's Nativity: "Sans cette banale aureole l'enfant divin illumine tous les entourants et semble lui-meme etre fait de lumiere. La Vierge Marie tient la couverture decouvrant l'enfant, et regarde les patres, avec un veritable sourire du ciel" (September 1875). Her criterion was always the same: religious painting must look alive, not manufactured. Saints should not appear "fabriques comme des plum-cakes."

Churches Marie Attended

Marie worshipped in Russian Orthodox churches across Europe and visited Catholic churches as both pilgrim and tourist. Key locations include:

- Nice, Russian Orthodox Church, rue Longchamp (1873-80): The family's regular parish, consecrated 1859. See Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Nice
- Nice, Pere Lavigne's Catholic church, avenue de la Gare (1873): Visited once, socially, producing scathing commentary
- Nice, English church (1873): Marie attended with Paul at least once
- Paris, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, rue Daru (1877-84): The Parisian Russian colony's center. See Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Paris
- Rome, Russian Orthodox chapel in the Embassy (1876, 1881): "Tres petite de sorte qu'on y est comme dans un petit salon"
- Rome, various Catholic churches (1876, 1881): Visited as art student and tourist
- Naples, Chancellery of the Russian Consulate (1877): "Celebre monstrueusement par un pretre grec"
- Kiev, Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (1881): The great cave monastery with its catacombs of mummified monks
- Kiev, Church of Saint Barbara (1881): Where Marie hoped for a miraculous healing
- Spain, Catholic churches in Seville (1881): Noted for their "romantisme religieux"
- Nice, aboard a Russian naval vessel (1875): Marie attended an Orthodox service on ship where the Empress was present

Usage Notes

Tag paragraphs with `[#Religion]` when they contain:
- Direct prayer or address to God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, or saints
- Church attendance, liturgical services, confession, communion
- Religious feast days (Easter/Paques, Christmas/Noel, Lent/Careme, etc.)
- Discussion of faith, doubt, theology, or God's existence
- Religious art criticism (in churches, not secular museum contexts)
- Superstition, fortune-telling, and folk beliefs with religious overtones
- Clergy, monks, religious institutions
- Religious objects: icons, candles, relics, holy water, crosses

Do NOT tag:
- Casual exclamations ("Mon Dieu!" as interjection without religious content)
- "Grace a Dieu" as mere idiom
- References to church architecture without religious discussion
- Political anticlericalism (tag with `[#Politics]` instead)