ORTHODOX CHURCH AND PRIESTS. 301 



ingenuity is exercised in preying on the credulity, the 

 fanaticism, and the superstition of the wooden-headed 

 moujik. The " merchant pope" not only acts as agent 

 for the sale of vodka, for the greater consumption of 

 which he multiplies the holidays and merry-makings in 

 his district, but he also concerns himself in the sale of 

 ikons, and by granting bogus certificates of communion. 



Every Orthodox Russian is required by law to pro- 

 vide himself with a certificate, showing that he has par- 

 taken of the holy communion within the year. To 

 backslide from the church is a penal offense, for which 

 thousands of Russians have been transported to Siberia, 

 and a subject of the Czar known to have been born in 

 the Orthodox faith, found by the police without a 

 eucharistical certificate from his priest, would find him- 

 self in trouble. Under the surface, dissent is rife ; and 

 it is in districts where dissatisfaction with the senseless 

 rituals of the established Church abounds that the com- 

 mercial pope flourishes and grows rich the fastest. 

 For the heretics who come to him, rubles in hand, he 

 makes out bogus certificates of communion, and those 

 who think to escape notice he ferrets out and levies 

 upon. 



The commercial pope bargains and chaffers over the 

 fees for baptisms, weddings, and burials, and every re- 

 ligious service required of him by his people is a finan- 

 cial speculation. For rubles he will officially condone 

 all offenses, and grant absolution for all manner of evil- 

 doing. Without pay he will neither pray for rain to 

 revive the moujiks' withering crops nor burn candles 

 before the ikon of St. Nicholas, the moujiks' favorite 

 saint. Much as they despise him, the moujiks believe 



