A RUSSIAN SECT.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 85, 17 January 1872, Page 3

A RUSSIAN SECT.

A correspondent of the Pull Mall Gazette at Moscow, writing on the 10th hist.., says:—“ A trial is now going on here which excites public curiosity in an extraordinary degree. The accused are members of the sect of the Skoptzi (mutilated). They are charged with heresy and the propagation of heretical opinions, and the court is crowded on eacli day of the trial by fashionable people anxious to see how tlfese singular fanatics look and behave. The most remarkable of the prisoners is an old man of eighty, named Michael Artamonoff, a sort of prophet in the sect. He wears blue spectacles, his hair is cut close to his head, and a twist in his mouth gives him a forbidding aspect. During the trial he sits immovable, with his hands on his knees. Behind him sit the brothers Kurdyn and twenty-four woman. The eldest of the Kurdyns has a shy look, a yellow complexion, and a voice like that of a woman’s. His mutilation dales from the year 1848. Ilis second brother is a portrait painter; be is short and exceedingly grave and reserved in manner. The youngest of the Kurdyus is a Moscow merchant, forty years old; he was mutilated when a child by his own father. His answers show great intelligence and a considerable amount of culture. Among the women there is not one that is remarkable either by personal appearance, education, or social position. Most of them are advanced in age (one is eighty years old) ; and these seem utterly lost to all sense of modesty. The younger girls, however, show that they keenly feel the shame of their position, and answer with a shy reserve which contrasts very favorably with the brazen self-assertion, of their elders.”