Obedience

Once there served a young sexton in a church. He was zealous in obedience and tried to get blessing for everything. One day, the dean charged him with bell-ringing before the service. The sexton immediately asked for blessing and went to the bell tower. A few minutes later the dean noticed that he had given the sexton the keys not to a big old lock, hanging on the door of the belfry, but to his new "Toyota".

He expected the careless novice to come back, but the church bell started ringing followed by change-ringing.

When the bell-ringer returned, they checked the keys. They were to the foreign car. The door to the bell tower was locked.

Later, the curious made several attempts to unlock the bell-tower with the keys to the dean’s car, but in vain. Probably they did not ask for blessing...

Read also

The monks who were 300 years ahead of progress

An inventory compiled by royal officials in the 16th century shows that these silent monks created Europe's first industrial network.

Bach’s Cathedral Not Made by Hands

Bach buried more than ten of his children, fought the city council over firewood, and went blind. Yet he managed to build a cathedral that no one can destroy.

Podil’s ark amid the plague catastrophe

In the mid-17th century, Kyiv found itself at the epicenter of an epidemic and war. Court records and chronicles reveal how residents sought refuge inside their locked homes.

The plot against the inventor of musical notation

The invention that rescued church music from oblivion cost its creator persecution and exile. The documents of the eleventh century allow us to reconstruct how it happened.

The right to eternal rest

Ancient Rome mercilessly erased the names of millions of ordinary people after death. Christians brought about an extraordinary revolution, restoring spiritual dignity to every human being.

The hidden heroism of Byzantium's underground Church

Textbook history reduces Iconoclasm to theological disputes in Constantinople. Yet the real drama unfolded far from the imperial capital – in forgotten villages where ordinary believers risked everything to preserve the faith.