pigia and the establishments of the first class have each thirty-three, the others still fewer; the regulations in this respect are relaxed according to the necessities of each locality; rural convents are allowed more inmates than those in cities, but the tendency of the reformatory measures now contemplated is, from motives of economy, to limit the number to the actual requirements of the service in each case, and to bring the monks strictly under the system of life in common, in order, by diminishing the expenses, to increase the funds that may be appropriated to the episcopal revenues, to the support of the poorer clergy, and to the maintenance of schools and hospitals.
The monasteries, as a body, are possessed of enormous wealth in immobilized property; they are rich in precious stones, pearls, and jewels, in vases of gold and silver, in furniture, ornaments, and objects of art of great value, the accumulations of centuries. These treasures, in many cases of fabulous amount, are unproductive and inalienable, sacred, as belonging to the altar. Some of these institutions have large incomes of their own, derived from lands formerly uncultivated, which, supposed to be of no value, escaped sequestration when their villages and serfs were taken by the State; from fisheries, and mills on streams formerly neglected, and from gifts and bequests sanctioned by special authorization. These revenues, where they exist, together with the government allowances, constitute but a portion of their actual resources. The sacred relics and miraculous pictures, which no convent is without, are objects of devout worship and superstitious veneration; they attract immense crowds of devotees, the aggregate of whose offerings is very large. At the Petcherski and the Troïtsa pilgrims are reckoned by hundreds of thousands, and none are so poor but leave
