Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/279

 the wives and daughters of priests, physicians, widows, midwives, and those who have been the subjects of a miracle from any of the saints, or those who have received manumission for the salvation of any soul; lastly, all the servants of monasteries and hospitals, and those who make the clothes of the monks. Whatever difference or disagreement, therefore, arises among the aforesaid persons, the bishop himself has power, as a competent judge, to decide upon and settle it; but if any controversy arise between these and laymen, it is decided by common law.

The proscurnicæ are women who, being past child-bearing, make the bread for the sacrifice, which bread is called proscura.

It is the duty of the bishops to adjudge divorces, not only among the Knesi and Boyars, but all laymen who keep concubines. It also appertains to the episcopal jurisdiction to decide if at any time a wife does not obey her husband; if any one be taken in adultery or fornication; if a man marry a woman who is a blood-relation; or if any married person plot any injury to his or her husband or wife. Also in cases of divination, incantations, poisonings, quarrels about heresy or fornication; or if a son injure his parents, or beat his sisters too severely. Moreover, they have the punishment of sodomites, sacrilegious persons, spoilers of the dead, and of such as tear away anything from the images of saints or from crucifixes for the sake of incantations, as well as of persons who either bring a dog, a bird, or any other unclean animal, into any sacred edifice, or who eat such things. In these cases, they have the ordering and appointing the measure of punishment for each. Let no one, however, be surprised, if he find the foregoing details differ in any way from the canons and traditions themselves, for some of them have been changed in some respects, not so much from age as that they have been allowed to become corrupted and vitiated for the sake of money.