The Discovery of Muscovy

by Richard Hakluyt

In the time of their fasts the neighbours everywhere go from one to another, and visit one another, and kiss one another with kisses of peace, in token of their mutual love and Christian concord; and then also they do more often than at any other time go to the Holy Communion. When seven days are past, from the beginning of the fast, then they often do either go to their churches or keep themselves at home and use often prayer; and for that seven nights they eat nothing but herbs; but after that seven night fast is once past, then they return to their old intemperance of drinking, for they are notable toss-pots. As for the keeping of their fasting days, they do it very straitly, neither do they eat anything besides herbs and salt fish as long as those fasting days do endure; but upon every Wednesday and Friday, in every week throughout the year, they fast.

There are very many monasteries of the order of Saint Benedict amongst them, to which many great livings, for their maintenance, do belong; for the friars and the monks do at the least possess the third part of the livings throughout the whole Muscovite Empire. To those monks that are of this order there is amongst them a perpetual prohibition that they may eat no flesh; and, therefore, their meat is only salt fish, milk, and butter; neither is it permitted them by the laws and customs of their religion to eat any fresh fish at all, and at those four fasting times whereof we spake before they eat no fish at all: only they live with herbs, and cucumbers, which they do continually for that purpose cause, and take order, to grow and spring for their use and diet.

As for their drink, it is very weak and small. For the discharge of their office they do every day say service, and that early in the mornings, before day; and they do in such sort and with such observation begin their service, that they will be sure to make an end of it before day; and about nine of the clock in the morning they celebrate the Communion. When they have so done they go to dinner, and after dinner they go again to service, and the like also after supper; and in the meantime, while they are at dinner, there is some exposition or interpretation of the Gospel used.

Whensoever any abbot of any monastery dieth, the Emperor taketh all his household stuff, beasts, flocks of sheep, gold, silver, and all that he hath, or else he that is to succeed him in his place and dignity doth redeem all those things, and buyeth them of the Emperor for money.

Their churches are built of timber, and the towers of their churches for the most part are covered with shingle boards. At the doors of their churches they usually build some entrance or porch, as we do, and in their churchyards they erect a certain house of wood, wherein they set up their bells—wherein sometimes they have but one, in some two, and in some also three.

There is one use and custom amongst them which is strange and rare, yet it is very ridiculous, and that is this: when any man dieth amongst them they take the dead body and put it in a coffin or chest, and in the hand of the corpse they put a little scroll, and in the same there are these words written, that the same man died a Russian of Russia, having received the faith and died in the same. This writing or letter they say they send to St. Peter, who, receiving it (as they affirm), reads it, and by-and-by admits him into heaven, and that his glory and place is higher and greater than the glory of the Christians of the Latin Church, reputing themselves to be followers of a more sincere faith and religion than they; they hold opinion that we are but half Christians, and themselves only to be the true and perfect Church—these are the foolish and childish dotages of such ignorant barbarians.

On the Muscovites that are Idolaters, Dwelling near to Tartaria.

There is a certain part of Muscovy, bordering upon the countries of the Tartars, wherein those Muscovites that dwell are very great idolaters; they have one famous idol amongst them, which they call the Golden Old Wife, and they have a custom that whensoever any plague or any calamity doth afflict the country, as hunger, war, or such like, then they go by-and-by to consult with their idol, which they do after this manner: they fall down prostrate before the idol, and pray unto it, and put in the presence of the same a cymbal, and about the same certain persons stand, which are chosen amongst them by lot: upon their cymbal they place a silver toad, and sound the cymbal, and to whomsoever of those lotted persons that toad goeth he is taken, and by-and-by slain; and immediately, I know not by what illusions of the devil or idol, he is again restored to life, and then doth reveal and deliver the causes of the present calamity. And by this means knowing how to pacify the idol, they are delivered from the imminent danger.

Of the form of their private Houses, and of the Apparel of the People.

The common houses of the country are everywhere built of beams of fir-trees; the lower beams do so receive the round hollowness of the uppermost, that by the means of the building thereupon they resist and expel all winds that blow, and where the timber is joined together, there they stop the chinks with moss. The form and fashion of their houses in all places is four-square, with straight and narrow windows, whereby with a transparent easement made or covered with skin like to parchment they receive the light. The roofs of their houses are made of boards covered without with the bark of trees: within their houses they have benches or grieves hard by their walls, which commonly they sleep upon, for the common people know not the use of beds: they have stoves wherein in the morning they make a fire, and the same fire doth either moderately warm or make very hot the whole house.