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At the end of the long dining-hall, beyond an ikonostas, was a church, as is customary in these refectories.
What we shall assuredly find is votaries ascending the steps to salute with devotion the benignant brown-faced Byzantine Virgin and Christ-Child, incrusted with superb jewels, or kneeling in "ground reverences," with brow laid to the marble pavement, before the ikonostas, or rood-screen, of solid silver.
Some of them placed red, yellow, or green tapers the first instance of such a taste in colors which we had observed on the sharp points of the silver candelabra standing before the holy pictures in the ikonostas, already overcrowded. A monk was incessantly engaged in removing the tapers when only half consumed, to make way for the ever-swelling flood of fresh tapers.
His vaingloriousness was shown by his habit of having his coat of arms placed on bells, ikonostasi,* and windows of the churches he built. In one case, he caused his portrait to be inserted in the holy door of the ikonostas, a very improper procedure, where it remained until the middle of the last century.
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