Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1883 — THE RUSSIAN MONKS. [ARTICLE]

THE RUSSIAN MONKS.

A Convent Which Possesses a Costly Imperial Autograph. According to tradition the Apostle Andrew visited the place where the city of Kieff now stands, on the high shore of the Dnieper, and, erecting a cross there, said: “in this country there shall shine a great Christian state.” Ten centuries later Vladimir, the great Prince of Russia, baptized his people in Kieff, and shortly afterward, perhaps on the spot trodden by St. Andrew, the first Russian convent was founded. The monks dug their cells in the ground, and thus the famous catacombs were made. I have visited these catacombs. While my monkish guide, with a taper in his hand, led the way and pointed out the last resting place of this -or that saint, I wondered at the gigantic work performed by Russian monks centuries ago. To dig an underground cell, to spend a whole lifetime in it, to die and be buried there—what a faith must these austere men have possessed. Dark and narrow were the cells they lived in, but they spread the light of Christian faith far and wide in Russia. Prayer was their special vocation, but they also worked hard. They destroyed the pagan temples and built Christian churches in their stead. Their academy ■was for centuries the only institution where theology, philosophy, and the sciences were taught. In the catacombs the monks mortified their flesh, prayed to God that He would forgive their Sills ftnd also the sins of the world at large, wrote chronicles, painted holy images, prepared vegetable medicines, and buried the martyrs who perished at the hands of Tartar khaus, Russian Princes, or pagan mobs. Centuries have passed, and what do we see in these catacombs ? The holy relics and dry bones of these old monks are exposed to the sight of curious people. The monks no longer live there. They go there only for the purpose of trade. Large metallic plates are put up at the grave of each of the fifty canonized saints, and esvery day the monks obtain piles of money from the pious pilgrims who come there from all the Russias. They sell the tears of St. Theophilus, the weeper, the oil that runs from • the grave of St. John of Many Sufferings, and drugs from the grave of St. Agapit, the Physician. In this manner the Kieff' convent has gathered many millions of rubles, and beside it owns bushels of precious stones. During the Crimean war, the Czar Nicholas borrowed from the Kieff convent 2,000,000 rubles upon a note in his own handwriting. Nicholas never paid the money back. Once when the late Czar Alexander visited Kieff the prior seized the opportunity to remind him of this debt to the convent, showing him Nicholas’ note. Alexander shed tears, kissed his father’s autograph, and said: “Truly, holy father, it is my beloved father’s handwriting. Oh, what a treasure yon have! Keep it in the sanctuary, and guard it better than your own eyes.” With that he returned the note to the prior. It is the costliest autograph in existence. — St. Petersburg Cor. New York Su/n.