st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

10 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
the west; thence a long staircase leads down into
a court before the chapel. The walls within are
covered with frescoes, some old, some belonging to
the time when the monastery was rebuilt, in 1840,
by the Russian Government. Greek saints, hideous
figures in black and grey dresses, with stoles on
which the cross and ladder and spear are painted in
white, stand out from gilded backgrounds. Against
these ghosts of their predecessors the monks were
ranged
in wooden stalls or miserere benches with
high arms, which supported their weary figures under
the armpits. The old men stood, or rather drooped,
in their places, with pale, sad faces, which spoke of
ignorance and of hopelessness, and sometimes of
vice and brutality; for the Greek monk is
perhaps
the most degraded representative of Christianity, and
these were the worst of their kind. Robed in long
sweeping gowns, with the cylindrical black felt cap on
their heads, they looked more like dead bodies than
living men, propped up against the quaint Byzantine
background. The floor of the church was unoc
. . .
cupied, and paved with marble ;
the transept was
closed by the great screen, blazing with gold, and
covered with dragons and arabesques and gaudy
pictures of saints and angels on wood. A smell of
incense filled the church, and the nasal drawl of the
officiating priest soon drove us away to the outer air.
.... The convent pets came about us, the beau
tiful black birds with orange wings, which live only in
the Jordan Valley, and have been named Tristram s
grackle, after that well-known explorer. They have
a beautiful clear note, the only pleasant sound ever