After breakfast, accompanied by our new friend with as unpronounceable a name as the best in Russia, we visited the catacombs of the Petcherskoi monastery. I have before remarked that Chioff is the holy city of the Russians, and the crowds of pilgrims we met at every turn in the streets constantly reminded us that this was the great season of the pilgrimage. I was but imperfectly acquainted with the Russian character, but in no one particular had I been so ignorant as in regard to their religious impressions. I had seen Italian, Greek, and Turkish devotees, but the Russian surpassed them all; and, though deriving their religion from strangers, they exceed the punctilious Greeks themselves in the observance of its minutest forms. Censurable, indeed, would he be considered who should pass, in city or in highway, the figure of the cross, the image of the Virgin, or any of the numerous family of saints, without taking off his hat and making on his breast the sacred sign of the cross; and in a city like Chioff, where every turn presents some new object claiming their worship, the eyes of our drosky boy were rapidly turning from one side to the other, and his hand was almost constantly in a quick mechanical motion.
The Church of the Catacombs, or the Cathedral of the Assumption, attached to the monastery, stands a little out of the city, on the banks of the Dnieper. It was founded in ten hundred and seventy-three, and has seven golden domes with golden spires, and chains connecting them. The dome of the belfry, which rises above the hill to the height of about three hundred feet, and above the Dnieper to that of five hundred and eighty-six, is considered by the Russians a chef d'oeuvre of architecture. It is adorned with Doric and Ionic columns and Corinthian pilasters; the whole interior bears the venerable garb of antiquity, and is richly ornamented with gold, silver, and precious stones and paintings; indeed, it is altogether very far superior to any Greek church I had then seen.
In the immense catacombs under the monastery lie the unburied bodies of the Russian saints, and year after year thousands and tens of thousands come from the wilds of Siberia and the confines of Tartary to kneel at their feet and pray. In one of the porches of the church we bought wax tapers, and, with a long procession of pilgrims, bareheaded and with lighted tapers in our hands, descended a long wooden staircase to the mouth of the catacomb. On each side along the staircase was ranged a line of kneeling devotees, of the same miserable description I had so often seen about the churches in Italy and Greece. Entering the excavated passages of the catacombs, the roof of which was black from the smoke of candles, we saw on each side, in niches in the walls, and in open coffins, enveloped in wrappers of cloth and silk, ornamented with gold and silver, the bodies of the Russian saints. These saints are persons who have led particularly pure and holy lives, and by reason thereof have ascended into heaven, where they are supposed to exercise an influence with the Father and Son; and their bodies are left unburied that their brethren may come to them for intercession, and, seeing their honours after death, study to imitate them in the purity of their lives. The bodies are laid in open coffins, with the stiffened hands so placed as to receive the kisses of pilgrims, and on their breasts are written their names, and sometimes a history of their virtuous actions. But we saw there other and worse things than these, monuments of wild and desperate fanaticism; for besides the bodies of saints who had died at God's appointed time, in one passage is a range of small windows, where men had with their own hands built themselves in with stones against the wall, leaving open only a small hole by which to receive their food; and died with the impious thought that they were doing their Maker good service. These little windows close their dwelling and their tomb; and the devoted Russian, while he kneels before them, believes that their unnatural death has purchased for them everlasting life, and place and power among the spirits of the blessed.