Page:Russian Church and Russian Dissent.djvu/28

Rh and believed. They glory over all the rest of the people of Muscovy for being rooted in the faith from ancient times, and having been the first to receive it.

Novgorod is a city of great antiquity, and its religious edifices are held in deepest veneration by the people. In popular tradition its celebrated monastery of St. Anthony the Great, or "the Roman," was founded by a monk of Rome, who, during the persecution for image worship, was miraculously borne upon a rock from the Tiber, over seas and rivers, to Novgorod on Lake Ilmen. The treasures of his convent, which he had consigned to the waters, followed him on his voyage. At Novgorod he found a Christian church, of which St. Nikita was metropolitan; with him Anthony joined in prayer, and immediately a knowledge of each other's tongue was imparted to them both. The ruler of the city gave him land for a convent; and his treasures, fished up from the lake, provided sacred furniture for the altars. The boat of stone still excites the devotion of the worshippers, and the palm branches in the chapel are still as green as when brought from Rome by Anthony.

Of St. Nikita it is related that he shut up Satan in a jar, and released him upon condition that he would carry him to Jerusalem and back. Thus the saint visited the holy places of the East in a single night.

These pious legends generally bear impress of the Oriental origin of the Church.

The Russian monk, Nestor, who died in 1116, relates in his chronicle that St. Andrew the Apostle, journeying by the river Dnieper, on his way from Asia Minor to Rome, came to the hills surmounting the site of the city of Kiev, and on their summit, after kneeling in prayer, he exclaimed to his companions: "Behold this mountain, for it is here that the grace of God shall shine