The service began.
It consisted of the following. The priest, having dressed in a
strange and very inconvenient garb, made of gold cloth, cut and
arranged little bits of bread on a saucer, and then put them into
a cup with wine, repeating at the same time different names and
prayers. Meanwhile the deacon first read Slavonic prayers,
difficult to understand in themselves, and rendered still more
incomprehensible by being read very fast, and then sang them turn
and turn about with the convicts. The contents of the prayers
were chiefly the desire for the welfare of the Emperor and his
family. These petitions were repeated many times, separately and
together with other prayers, the people kneeling. Besides this,
several verses from the Acts of the Apostles were read by the
deacon in a peculiarly strained voice, which made it impossible
to understand what he read, and then the priest read very
distinctly a part of the Gospel according to St. Mark, in which
it said that Christ, having risen from the dead before flying up
to heaven to sit down at His Father's right hand, first showed
Himself to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had driven seven
devils, and then to eleven of His disciples, and ordered them to
preach the Gospel to the whole creation, and the priest added
that if any one did not believe this he would perish, but he that
believed it and was baptised should be saved, and should besides
drive out devils and cure people by laying his hands on them,
should talk in strange tongues, should take up serpents, and if
he drank poison should not die, but remain well.
The essence of the service consisted in the supposition that the
bits cut up by the priest and put by him into the wine, when
manipulated and prayed over in a certain way, turned into the
flesh and blood of God.
These manipulations consisted in the priest's regularly lifting
and holding up his arms, though hampered by the gold cloth sack
he had on, then, sinking on to his knees and kissing the table
and all that was on it, but chiefly in his taking a cloth by two
of its corners and waving it regularly and softly over the silver
saucer and golden cup. It was supposed that, at this point, the
bread and the wine turned into flesh and blood; therefore, this
part of the service was performed with the greatest solemnity.
"Now, to the blessed, most pure, and most holy Mother of God,"
the priest cried from the golden partition which divided part of
the church from the rest, and the choir began solemnly to sing
that it was very right to glorify the Virgin Mary, who had borne
Christ without losing her virginity, and was therefore worthy of
greater honour than some kind of cherubim, and greater glory than
some kind of seraphim. After this the transformation was
considered accomplished, and the priest having taken the napkin
off the saucer, cut the middle bit of bread in four, and put it
into the wine, and then into his mouth. He was supposed to have
eaten a bit of God's flesh and swallowed a little of His blood.
Then the priest drew a curtain, opened the middle door in the
partition, and, taking the gold cup in his hands, came out of the
door, inviting those who wished to do so also to come and eat
some of God's flesh and blood that was contained in the cup. A
few children appeared to wish to do so.