The service ended, and the chief treasure of the monastery, the miraculous image of the Assumption of the Virgin,-the Falling Asleep of the Virgin is the Russian name,-was let slowly down on its silken cords from above the Imperial Gate, where a twelve-fold silver lamp, with glass cups of different colors, has burned unquenched since 1812, in commemoration of Russia's deliverance from "the twelve tribes," as the French invasion is termed. The congregation pressed forward eagerly to salute the venerated image. Tradition asserts that it was brought from Constantinople to Kieff in the year 1073, with the Virgin's special blessing for the monastery. By reason of age and the smoke from conflagrations in which the monastery has suffered, the image is so darkened that one is cast back upon one's imagination and the copies for comprehension of this treasure's outlines. What is perfectly comprehensible, however, is the galaxy of diamonds, brilliants, and gems thickly set in the golden garments which cover all but the hands and feet of the personages in the picture, and illuminate it with flashes of many-hued light. After a few minutes, the image was drawn up again to its place,-a most unusual position for a valued holy image, though certainly safe, and one not occupied, so far as I am aware, by any other in the country.
It occurred to us that it might prove an interesting experiment to try the monastery inn for breakfast, and even to sojourn there for a day or two, and abandon the open sewers and other traces of advanced civilization in the town. Our way thither led past the free lodgings for poor pilgrims, which were swarming with the devout of both sexes, although it was not the busiest season for shrine-visiting. That comes in the spring, before the harvest, at all monasteries, and, in this particular monastery, on the feast of the Assumption, August 15 (Russian style), 27 (European style). But there was a sufficient contingent of the annual one million pilgrims present to give us a very fair idea of the reverence in which this, the chief of all Russian monasteries, is held, and of the throngs which it attracts. But, as usual in Russia, sight alone convinced us of their existence; they were chatting quietly, sitting and lying about with enviable calmness, or eating the sour black bread and boiled buckwheat groats provided by the monastery. I talked with several of them, and found them quite unconscious that they were not comfortably, even luxuriously, housed and fed.
The inn for travelers of means was a large, plain, airy building, with no lodgers, apparently. The monks seemed frightened at the sight of us. That was a novelty. But they escorted us over the house in procession. We looked at a very clean, very plain room, containing four beds. It appeared, from their explanations, that pilgrims have gregarious tastes, and that this was their nearest approach to a single room. I inquired the price. "According to your zeal," was the reply. How much more effective than "What you please" in luring the silver from lukewarm pockets! The good monks never found out how warm our zeal was, after all, for the reason that their table was never furnished with anything but fish and "fasting food," they said, though there was no fast in progress. The reason why, I could not discover; but we knew our own minds thoroughly on the subject of "fasting food," from mushroom soup, fish fried in sunflower oil, and coffee without milk to that most insipid of dessert dishes, kisel, made of potato flour, sweetened, and slightly soured with fruit juice. They told us that we might have meat sent out from town, if we wished; but as the town lay several versts distant, that did not seem a very practical way of coquetting with the Evil One under their roof. Accordingly, we withdrew; to their relief, I am sure. As we had already lived in a monastery inn, it had not occurred to us that there could be any impropriety in doing so, but that must have been the cause of their looks of alarm. I believe that one can remain for a fortnight at this inn without payment, unless conscience interferes; and people who had stayed there told me that meat had been served to them from the monastery kitchen; so that puzzle still remains a puzzle to me.
We went to see the brethren dine in the refectory, an ancient, vaulted building of stone, near the cathedral. Under a white stone slab near the entrance lie the bodies of Kotchubey and Iskra, who were unjustly executed by Peter the Great for their loyal denunciation of Mazeppa's meditated treachery. Within, the walls of the antechamber were decorated with dizzy perspective views of Jerusalem, the saints, and pious elders of the monastery. At the end of the long dining-hall, beyond an ikonostas, was a church, as is customary in these refectories. Judging from the number of servitors whom we had met hurrying towards the cells with sets of porcelain dinner-trays, not many monks intended to join the common table, and it did not chance to be one of the four days in the year when the Metropolitan of Kieff and other dignitaries dine there in full vestments.
At last, a score of monks entered, chanted a prayer at a signal from a small bell, and seated themselves on benches affixed to the wall which ran round three sides of the room. The napkins on the tables which stood before the benches consisted of long towels, each of which lay across four or five of the pewter platters from which they ate, as the table was set in preparation. If it had been a festal day, there would have been several courses, with beer, mead, and even wine to wash them down. As it was, the monks ate their black bread and boiled buckwheat groats, served in huge dishes, with their wooden spoons, and drank kvas, brewed from sour black bread, at a signal from the bell, after the first dish only, as the rule requires. While they ate, a monk, stationed at a desk near by, read aloud the extracts from the Lives of the Saints appointed for the day. This was one of the "sights," but we found it curious and melancholy to see strong, healthy men turned into monks and content with that meagre fare. Frugality and dominion over the flesh are good, of course, but minds from west of the Atlantic Ocean never seem quite to get into sympathy with the monastic idea; and we always felt, when we met monks, as though they ought all to be off at work somewhere,-I will not say "earning money," for they do that as it is in such great monasteries as that of Kieff, but lightening the burden of the peasants, impossible as that is under present conditions, or making themselves of some commonplace, practical use in the world.
The strongest point of the Lavra, even equal to the ancient and venerated ikona of the Assumption in the great cathedral, is the catacombs, from which the convent takes its name.
In the days of the early princes of Kieff, the heights now occupied by the Lavra were covered with a dense growth of birch forest, and entirely uninhabited. Later on, one of the hills was occupied by the village of Berostovo, and a palace was built adjoining the tiny ancient "Church of the Saviour in the Birch Forest," which I have already mentioned. It was the favorite residence of Prince-Saint Vladimir, and of his son, Prince Yaroslaff, after him. During the reign of the latter, early in the eleventh century, the priest of this little church, named Ilarion, excavated for himself a tiny cave, and there passed his time in devout meditation and solitary prayer. He abandoned his cave to become Metropolitan of Kieff. In the year 1051, the monk Antony, a native of the neighboring government of Tchernigoff, came to Kieff from Mount Athos, being dissatisfied with the life led in the then existing monasteries. After long wanderings over the hills of Kieff, he took possession of Ilarion's cave, and spent his days and nights in pious exercises. The fame of his devout life soon spread abroad, and attracted to him, for his blessing, not only the common people, but persons of distinction. Monks and worldlings flocked thither to join him in his life of prayer. Among the first of these to arrive was a youth of the neighborhood, named Fedosy. Antony hesitated, but at last accepted the enthusiastic recruit.
The dimensions of holy Antony 's cave were gradually enlarged; new cells, and even a tiny church, were constructed near it. Then Antony, who disliked communal life, retreated to the height opposite, separated from his first residence by a deep ravine, and dug himself another cave, where no one interfered with him. This was the origin of the caves of Fedosy, known at the present day as the "far catacombs," and of the caves of Antony, called the "near catacombs." The number of the monks continued to increase, and they soon erected a small wooden church aboveground, in the name of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, as well as cells for those who could not be contained in the caverns. At the request of holy Antony, the prince gave the whole of the heights where the catacombs are situated to the brethren, and in 1062 a large new monastery, surrounded by a stockade, was erected on the spot where the Cathedral of the Assumption now stands. Thus was monastic life introduced into Russia.