Orthodoxy is a far more emotional experience of the Christian idea; the music and the pageantry of the ceremonies themselves are designed to induce a certain amount of religious ecstasy on the part of the believer. I am a Catholic, and when my Orthodox friends have accompanied me to Mass, they have usually been disappointed by its' low-key ritual (this may not have always been the truth prior to Vatican II, but it certainly is now). It also recognizes a wider variety of God's Fools than western Christianity, i.e it makes provision for a much wider range of mystical experience as part of the everyday life of the Church. The world-view that it creates is encompassing, so while it is odd to read that people believe in the miraculous, it is not out of line with the beliefs of the church. In that sense, Nicholas' use of the comb may strike us as silly --- but it would have been integrated into his psyche without too much difficulty.
You have made an excellent point, Simon. I don't know if many people here are all that aware of the important role that holy fools (
yurodivye) played in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian Orthodoxy. Many of these
yurodivye were quite bizarre by any Western standards. One very famous medieval holy fool, who became a revered Orthodox saint (I'm sorry I can't remember his name, I'll try to find it), according to his hagiography actually struck dead some children who were taunting him. Surprisingly, this was not considered an "unholy" action on his part! I would also note the pivotal role that the
yurodivyi or holy fool plays in Alexander Pushkin's play
Boris Godunov, later the basis of Mussorgsky's famous opera of that name. In short, we see in the figure of the
yurodivyi that Russian Orthodoxy is much less than Catholicism a religion of the word and the book (none of these
yurodivye could be called learned men or women - quite the opposite). It is much more a religion of the heart and the spirit. I think this is what Simon is getting at.
Leo Tolstoy, in his flight from his family and estate at Yasnaya Polyana at the end of his life, was in many ways acting out the role of the
yurodivyi in eschewing all family ties and worldly goods. I suppose the modern American equivalent of a
yurodivyi would be a street person who talks aloud to God.
This reminds me of an experience I had in Russia back in the early 1990s, when an obviously very mentally unbalanced man came into a bookstore and started ranting about how the KGB and CIA were out to get him. Now, most Americans, confronted with such a scene, would look away in embarrassment and try to pretend they had heard nothing - whereas the Russians present on this occasion actually stopped whatever they were doing and paid close attention to the poor insane man. At the end of his rant an older lady went up to him and said, "Ne bespokoites', ne bespokoites'," which is the Russian equivalent of telling a small child, "Don't worry, don't worry."
I have to admit that this side of traditional Russian culture holds tremendous appeal for me, but I fear it has died out in the last ten years or so, under the onslaught of Western values of worldly success and fame.
Surely if the theological underpinnings of the autocracy itself were persuasive to the Tsar, one holy comb more or less wasn't going to be much of a strain. Alexandra had what might be called a convert's mentality -- so did Ella --- in that they became more Orthodox than the Orthodox, if you see what I mean. That, combined with her natural guilt over Alexei's condition --- well, I think she grasped at everything that was available, including magic combs.
Again, you make an excellent point. IMHO Russian Orthodoxy at the turn of the twentieth century would have been especially appealing to anyone with the equivalent of, shall we say, modern-day New Age leanings. The number of mystics in Russian Orthodoxy at this time was quite large and it was not a prerequisite that one be highly learned in order to understand their teachings. (Contrast the lay appeal of Russian Orthodoxy with the intellectual rigor of some Catholic orders like the Jesuits, not to mention that of many Catholic saints like Thomas Aquinas.)
