Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/459

Rh at the icon hung in the corner facing him, and bows to it. That is his primary religious duty.

As in Ireland, commercial and educational progress is hindered in Russia by the multitude of saints' days. The dies nefas, when work is tabooed, becomes a serious handicap in the race of modern life. These saints' days together with the Sundays rob the Russian of nearly one-third of his time, for they leave him only about 250 days for work. He would sooner work on a Sunday than on a saint's day.

Pilgrimages assume enormous proportions in the Church life of Russia. Kiev is now the chief centre of pilgrimages in the world. It has been calculated that in the year 1886 at least a million pilgrims, each contributing a candle and a coin, visited this city, the shrine of primitive Russian Christianity. Sometimes the atmosphere in a church becomes positively stifling, and the people are nearly choked by the fumes of the pilgrims' innumerable candles. Relics and miracle-working icons are the special objects visited in these huge pilgrimages. In many convents the monks' occupation seems to consist simply in keeping relics and icons and collecting alms.