was a sign of the extension of Russia in Asia that was now going on. Two dioceses in Tobolsk and Siberia were added (a.d. 1623). Philaret prepared a new Trebuik, or book of ritual,[1] and other service books.
Modern Western scholarship was now gradually trickling into Russia, though only in slender rills, which left the greater part of the empire intellectually dry and barren. The most prominent leader in this movement was Peter Mogila. He had been educated at the university of Paris, had served as a distinguished soldier in the Polish war, and had subsequently taken the tonsure and retired to the Pechersky Monastery, of which in course of time he was made archimandrite. No sooner was Mogila in charge of this great monastery than he established a school, from which he sent the more promising students to universities in Western Europe, Cyril Lucar took note of his intellectual activity and appointed him exarch of his See. Peter Mogila was more competent to appreciate the various aspects of the age-long controversy with Rome than any previous defenders of orthodoxy had been. He had a printing press, from which he issued editions of the Fathers, and service books carefully edited in the interest of orthodoxy, in order to counteract the service books circulated by the Uniats. This is a curious feature of the polemics of the Russian Church and most significant of the importance attached to ritual. Very few people could read; sermons were rarely preached. Apart from the schools, which could not have been numerous, most of the people got their religious instruction from the contemplation of pictures and from attendance at the services. The icons were worshipped as mere fetishes; still, to thoughtful people many of them conveyed historical and allegorical lessons. Then the ritual was all symbolical, and the words of the service books embodied the dogmas of the faith. For most people these were the only verbal or literary
- ↑ The Trebuik is like the Roman ritual, a book directing the rites for all the sacraments except the communion, which is regulated by the ritual of the Liturgy, corresponding to the Roman mass.
