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National Geographic : 1916 Sep
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STILL CHANTING AT 4A.M. My friend, the as sistant librarian, kind lysawtoitthatIdid not miss the climax of the ceremony. It was strange, at 4 o'clock in the morning, to come out of the cool starlight of the court into the heat and press and splendor of the church, to find the good fathers chanting on as I had left them, as monks had chanted before them for a thousand years. The responses passed from transept to transept in the antique Byzantine monotone. First at one lectern and then at the other a young deacon in toned from an illumi nated missal. His pale, serious face and the red glint in the hair waving about his shoulders made me ,, think of a Giorgione. Others, in magnificent brocades, swinging censers, came and * went. The officiating bishop, an old man THE PIIIATE bowed down by his This beautiful jeweled miter and his of the monastery cloth - of - gold vest- in 1060, although t ments, sat on a carved the sixteenth or s and ilded throne, the marble panels lnga mer ' tain built in Const holding an emerald tion of his two vis cross in one hand and Byzantine design. in the other a tall gold crozier. And lights were everywhere in brass and silver candalabra, in a fan tastic silver tree bearing oranges of gold, in votive lamps and chandeliers before dim images, and in the great brass cor onal, with its double-headed eagles of Byzantium, swinging from the central dome. The focus of the ceremony was an an cient icon of the Virgin. It stood on a sort of easel draped with rich stuffs, under a parasol of flowered white bro- Photograph by H. G . Dwight OR FONT OF LAVRA: MT. ATHOS, GREECE and interesting church fountain stands in front Church of Lavra. The phiate was originally built he brickwork of the present structure dates from eventeenth century. But the fountain itself and surrounding it are, no doubt, original. The foun antinople by Emperor William I1, in commemora 'its to Sultan Abd-iil-Hamid, was inspired by this cade. As the office proceeded, the breast of the figure was hung with old Byzantine jewelry and strings of gold coins. Among them I afterward saw a Roman stater, two beautiful Alexanders, and any num ber of Venetian ducats and besants of Constantinople. BLESSING TIIE BARLEY CAKE At sunrise the Virgin was divested of her more precious finery and carried out of the church under her parasol. Pre-
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