Book 1 Chapter 39 The Prison Church - Blind Leaders of the Blind

The service began.

It consisted of the following. The priest, having dressed in a
strange and very inconvenient garb, made of gold cloth, cut and
arranged little bits of bread on a saucer, and then put them into
a cup with wine, repeating at the same time different names and
prayers. Meanwhile the deacon first read Slavonic prayers,
difficult to understand in themselves, and rendered still more
incomprehensible by being read very fast, and then sang them turn
and turn about with the convicts. The contents of the prayers
were chiefly the desire for the welfare of the Emperor and his
family. These petitions were repeated many times, separately and
together with other prayers, the people kneeling. Besides this,
several verses from the Acts of the Apostles were read by the
deacon in a peculiarly strained voice, which made it impossible
to understand what he read, and then the priest read very
distinctly a part of the Gospel according to St. Mark, in which
it said that Christ, having risen from the dead before flying up
to heaven to sit down at His Father's right hand, first showed
Himself to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had driven seven
devils, and then to eleven of His disciples, and ordered them to
preach the Gospel to the whole creation, and the priest added
that if any one did not believe this he would perish, but he that
believed it and was baptised should be saved, and should besides
drive out devils and cure people by laying his hands on them,
should talk in strange tongues, should take up serpents, and if
he drank poison should not die, but remain well.