In the time of their fasts the neighbours everywhere go from one to
another, and visit one another, and kiss one another with kisses of
peace, in token of their mutual love and Christian concord; and then
also they do more often than at any other time go to the Holy
Communion. When seven days are past, from the beginning of the
fast, then they often do either go to their churches or keep
themselves at home and use often prayer; and for that seven nights
they eat nothing but herbs; but after that seven night fast is once
past, then they return to their old intemperance of drinking, for
they are notable toss-pots. As for the keeping of their fasting
days, they do it very straitly, neither do they eat anything besides
herbs and salt fish as long as those fasting days do endure; but
upon every Wednesday and Friday, in every week throughout the year,
they fast.

There are very many monasteries of the order of Saint Benedict
amongst them, to which many great livings, for their maintenance, do
belong; for the friars and the monks do at the least possess the
third part of the livings throughout the whole Muscovite Empire. To
those monks that are of this order there is amongst them a perpetual
prohibition that they may eat no flesh; and, therefore, their meat
is only salt fish, milk, and butter; neither is it permitted them by
the laws and customs of their religion to eat any fresh fish at all,
and at those four fasting times whereof we spake before they eat no
fish at all: only they live with herbs, and cucumbers, which they
do continually for that purpose cause, and take order, to grow and
spring for their use and diet.

As for their drink, it is very weak and small. For the discharge of
their office they do every day say service, and that early in the