2006 Korennaya Hermitage Photos #35
Korennaya Hermitage Bell Tower Archway
The archway is writen on old Church Slavonic language Before the eighteenth century, Church Slavonic was in wide use as a general literary language in Russia. Although it was never spoken per se outside church services, members of the priesthood, poets, and the educated tended to slip its expressions into their speech. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was gradually replaced by the Russian language in secular literature and retained its use only in church.