i8 
Land & A\^ater 
March 7, 191^ 
were beautiful, and belonged, many of them, to the seven- 
teenth centur\-, having been gifts to the Patrianhs and other 
ecclesiastics from the various Grand Dukes, Emperors, and 
Boyars, their artistic merit was not of the very highest, 
except as e.xamples of Russian art, whereas the gold and 
jewelled work of the mitres and the vestments, so slight in 
intrinsic importance, was of the highest possible value from 
an artistic point of view. It may be hoped that the melting 
down has been confined to the larger pieces — great steeple 
cups. Large drinking cups, tankards, holy-water vases, dishes, 
oil jars, salt cellars, cups to contain chrism, and large cisterns 
in which the chrisms, or sacred oils, have been mixed. .All 
these objects were of 
great beauty and magni- 
ficence, but of far less 
importance than the 
panagia. the mitres, and 
the robes. 
Amongst the \'est- 
ments. the chief was the 
Sakkos, and, of them, 
the finest was that which 
was presented by the 
Emperor Ivan the Ter- 
rible to the Metropolitan 
Denys in 15.S1, but the 
most beautiful that which 
belonged to St. Photius. 
who was Metropolitan of 
the whole of Russia in 
1408, and died in 1431. 
His vestment, which has 
with it a separate collar, 
stole, long separate 
sleeves, mantle, and 
omophoros, was decor- 
ated with portraits of 
the Greek Emperor 
Paleologos and his wife 
Anne, and of various 
other important persons of their Court, and had in fine pearls 
the whole of the orthodox creed, embroidered in Greek. 
Over the front and back of it were small separate divisions, 
like architectural work on the front of a cathedral, and iii 
each little section was either the figure of an Evangelist or an 
Apostle, or a representation from the Bible of some scene 
exquisitely embroidered, and outlined, with very cunning 
skill, with tiny gems used skilfully to enhance its beauty. 
There were no great stones upon the vestments of the 
Metropolitan Photius. They were all vcr\- small ones, fine 
in quality, and generally pierced ; and the skill with which 
they were combined with the embroidery was beyond all 
praise. 
The Sacristy also contained small pieces of fine embroidery 
from the vestments of the Metropolitan Peter, who was 
Gold and Silver Vessels 
consecrated in 1308, and one of his successor's, St. Cyprian 
(1380). and also a larger piece of a vestment made for St. 
Peter, when the chair of the Patriarch was transferred to 
Moscow in 1325. In no other place in Russia was it possible 
to see embroidery of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
and in such perfect order as could be seen in this Sacristy. 
Many of the other vestments, in their lavish adornment 
with great precit)us stones, were prolsably far more attractive 
to the robbers ; the robe that Ivan the Terrible gave was 
Said to weigh sixty pounds, and was adorned with magni- 
ficent sapphires and large square-cut emeralds, and even 
that was exceeded in lavish work by a vestment made in 
185(1 for Alexander II., 
which, although remark- 
able in plain outline, was 
a blaze of superb gold and 
precious stones. 
It seems inconceivable 
that the Russians, who 
valued these treasures so 
highly and had pre- 
served them with such 
infinite care, should have 
allowed sacrilegious 
thieves to scatter them 
in all directions, and, 
hoping a.gainst hope, one 
desires yet to hear that 
some of the more pre- 
cious of the treasures^ — 
at least, some of the 
smaller ones, such as the 
isanagia. the rosaries, or 
the palliums — may have 
Ijpen sa\'ed. 
These illustrations are, 
unfortunately, not from 
photographs, but from 
the wood blocks in the 
rare catalogue men- 
tioned, and do not do adequate justice to the objects. In 
the second group are illustrated a fine sjilt drinking cup of 
Augsburg work of 1629, one of the smaller Imperial drinking 
cups, and a yet smaller kind of tumbler of 1690 which belonged 
to the Patriarch Adrien, as also the great silver-gilt tankard 
of Boris Godounoff (159S-1605). 
The three lower illustrations depict a chrism ladle of 
fine French work, which came from Pskoff, and was made 
in 1620 ; the dish belonging to the Godounoff tankard; and 
a drinking cup of solid gold, which was presented by Prince 
Basil Ivannovitch to the Patriarchs in 1394. This last 
piece is really delightful in its simple lines and delicate 
chased work, albeit it is somewhat out of shape owing to 
the softness of the metal. The illustration makes it look 
almost flat, which is not the case. 
\fi p,... 
?!(? ancienne §recque 
20 Panagie duPatnarcire Adrien 
laPanagie duPalriarche IhiUrete NikilUch 
Panagia or Portable Pyxes 
