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Rh less embarrassment to both the Church and the State, Its action, though less multiform and varied than elsewhere in Europe, has been deeply felt. In Russia, as in Gaul and in Germany, monks have been the pioneers of civilization, as well as of Christianity. They penetrated the vast solitudes of the North and the East, converted barbarians and cleared forests, spread the Gospel among savage tribes and improved their material condition, and population followed after them as they advanced. Sympathizing and mingling freely with the people, they have had profound influence in forming national character, and have identified religion with national life. In the centuries of wars with Tatars, Lithuanians, Poles, and Swedes, monasteries have been the ramparts and bulwarks of the national existence, which owes both its origin and its preservation to the Church; in times of anarchy and subjugation its establishments have been the only havens of refuge for letters and learning brought from Byzantium; their only ark of safety in the deluge of barbaric invasion.

The history of the empire can be read in the annals of its great lavra. Those of the Petcherski, the convent of catacombs on the banks of the Dnieper, embrace the nation's youth, the age of Kiev, its ancient patrimony; while those of the Troïtsa cover its growth to maturity, the age of Moscow, its natural capital.

The great monasteries were, in reality, fortified cities of vast extent and dense population, grouping numerous churches around their shrines; in the Troïtsa there were fourteen, in the Solovetsk convent seven, in the Simonov and Donskoï five and six. Each name revives the memory of great deeds and heroic struggles, and appeals to both religious and patriotic sentiment. The walls of the Troïtsa exhausted the strength of the victorious Poles, and preserved the nations life when Moscow and the