ish the
authenticity of the relic, which consequently was licensed to work
miracles and worked them.(121)

The most celebrated collection of relics in Russia is found in the town of
Kioff, on the Dnieper, and where the bodies of many hundreds of saints are
deposited in a kind of crypt called _Piechary_, _i.e._, caverns. The
chronicles relate that the digging of this sacred cavern was commenced in
the eleventh century by two monks called Anthony and Theodosius, who had
come from the Mount Athos, for their own and their disciples' abode. It
was gradually extended, but the living established themselves afterwards
in a convent above ground, leaving to the dead the part under it. This
statement is considered to be authentic, but the numerous bodies of the
saints with which the long subterranean galleries of that cavern are
filled, have never been satisfactorily accounted for. It is the opinion of
many, that the nature of the soil is so dry, that, absorbing all the
moisture, it keeps the dead bodies which are deposited there in a more or
less perfect state of preservation; and it is said that an enlightened
archbishop of Kioff proved it by a successful experiment, putting into
that place the bodies of two women, who had been confined as prisoners in
a nunnery for their many vices. Be it as it may, Kioff is the resort of an
immense number of pilgrims, who arrive from all parts of Russia, to
worship the bodies of the saints, and the riches accumulated by their
pious donations at that place are only second to those of Troitza (p.
181).

The shrines of Jerusalem, which attract crowds of pilgrims from all parts
of the Christian world, had been for a long time a subject of dispute
between the Latins and the Greeks, and it is well known that the
politico-religious complications in which Europe is at present involved
have arisen from the claims of Russia relating to those shrines. It will,
therefore, I think, be not uninteresting to my readers to see the devout
manner in which these shrines are worshipped by the pilgrims of the
Graeco-Russian Church; and I subjoin the two following accounts of this
subject, written at an interval of a century and a half, in order that my
readers may be able to judge for themselves whether the progress of
civilization during this period has had much influence on the pilgrims
alluded to above.

The first of these accounts is an extract from the diary of an English
clergyman, the Rev. Henry Maundrell