In the days of Simeon the Proud, son and successor of Kalita, Sergius, the Benedict of the Russian Church, withdrew from the stirring, tempting life of the capital to dwell apart and foster his religious aspirations, selecting for his retirement a spot some sixty miles from Moscow, within an untrodden wood, where for a long period his only companions were the bear and the beaver; his food, herbs and the wild honey, always abundant in the hollow trees of Russian forests. In those times when the benignant influence of Christianity was scarcely felt in many classes of society, the spiritually minded, who valued above all other possessions their simple virtue and a good conscience, were drawn to a secluded and exclusively religious life; hence, as the years passed, numbers of sincere self-denying souls gathered about the son of the Rostof boyar. His moral wisdom and impartial position caused him to be consulted by the great and powerful on occasions momentous for themselves, or for the welfare of their people. Warriors sought his blessing upon their enterprises, and princes asked his counsel upon affairs of state. The particular privileges accorded to ecclesiastical institutions, the security of their estates, and the industrial instruction imparted by the monks to the common people, drew large numbers of these latter to the region of the monastery, whose work-shops and glebes were the most prosperous of the country, and whose industries were uninterrupted by the continual ravages of war. Cleanly kept, enclosed within walls of huge thickness flanked with towers, the inhabitants of Troïtsa were exempt from the calamities of pestilence and fire. Having many dependents living in communal villages,—in the days of serfdom it possessed a hundred and six thousand serfs, not to mention the monastic establishments, some thirty-two in number, that were offshoots from it,—its peace-loving inhabitants could defend themselves and their people in times of emergency. The fires of national and religious independence burned upon altars within its gates that were never reached by papal Pole or pagan Tatar, although it was more than once besieged. The most cruel of Tsars, the wicked Ivan Fourth, appropriated money and men for the building of half its stately structures. Hither came Peter the Great for rest of soul during the intervals of his journeys and campaigns; and Catherine Second, putting aside her cares, abandoning for the time her excesses, to commune with the Sovereign before whom emperors and empresses are but sinful, perishing, human beings. From the beginning, pilgrims from all the grades of life have journeyed to the shrine[A] of the saint, who remained to his latest day a simple, laborious servitor, in no way exalted by the honors put upon him, or by the material increase of his community. In later years the Metropolitan of Moscow has been the archimandrite, or abbot, of the monastery; a