Being a monastery church, all the men stood on one side, the women, visitors, and pilgrims on the other, during the service at which we were present. Afterwards, in the Greek Churches in St. Petersburg, we found that the sexes were not divided in this manner.
It was the first time we had participated at a Russian service, and the chief impression left on our minds was the endless movement of the congregation. They were everlastingly crossing themselves, not once, but two or three times running, and every few minutes they all did it again; then about every twelfth person would kneel down, and putting his hands on the floor before him touch the ground with his forehead like the Mohammedans when they pray to the Prophet, and tell their beads as true monks tell theirs. One man we watched go down _forty times running_ and cross himself three times between each reverence! A penance, no doubt, but a penance unlikely to do any one much good, at least so we could not help thinking.
Again, a woman, a poor fat old pilgrim, who got on her knees with the greatest difficulty, remained with her forehead on the ground for at least five minutes, till we really began to wonder if she were dead; but at last she rose after some trouble, for we had to help her up, and we fervently hoped that was the end of her penance, poor old soul. Not a bit of it; a quarter of an hour afterwards she was down again and when we left she was still praying. Then a strange-looking sort of priest came and stood beside us, instead of joining the other men who clustered round the _Igumen's_ throne or before the altar. After scrutinising him for some time, surprised at a man standing among the women, we discovered _he_ was a _she_ come on a pilgrimage to pray. She of strange garb was an abbess!
The reverence in the Greek Church is far more living than it now is in the Church of Rome, though outwardly both are so much alike to the outsider. The Catholic priests cannot marry, while the priests in the Greek Church may do so.
We were getting very tired of standing listening to the monotonous reading of the psalms, watching the priests walking about in their long black robes, taking their hats off and on, and endlessly kneeling or bowing to the great _Igumen_ who stood during the whole ceremony on a carved wooden throne covered with scarlet velvet. The singing was very unequal. The choirs came in from both sides of the altar twice, and formed themselves into a half circle on the floor of the church--as choirs used to do at the representations of the Greek plays of old. We were well-nigh suffocated with incense and the strange odour that emanates from a Russian peasant, and had begun to think of those queer little wooden beds in which we were to pass the night--and what a contrast the primitive cell was to that gorgeous glittering church--when we saw our "beautiful boy" beckoning to us.