John Glen King, a Cambridge, MA, ordained priest in 1756, came to St Petersburg as chaplain to the British Factory, the centre of the British mercantile community in the city. His post gave him the opportunity to research the history of the Russian Church. The notes he originally produced were only for himself and his friends, but further study led him deeper, and fired him to write a more accurate and scholarly account than those told by previous English travellers, who knew nothing of the language or the subject, ‘but went into a church, stared about them, and then came home, and published an account of what they saw, according to their own imagination; … not seldom misunderstanding whatever they beheld’. Apparently authoritative works would repeat these misunderstandings as plain fact (for example, he cites John Perry’s account of church ceremonies, much repeated by subsequent authors, as ‘one continued series of blunders and absurdities’).

The first version of this work was included as an appendix in Sir George Macartney’s (1737–1806) An Account of Russia, 1767 (1768), but King later published a fuller version in 1772, after receiving Fellowships of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society, and the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Oxford. His new academic reputation would have facilitated his publication, as would the patronage of George III, to whom the book is dedicated.

The work is well illustrated, giving plans of the layout of a Russian church, and the vestments and utensils used. This plate shows the iconostasis, the screen between the nave and the ‘Holy of Holies’ where the altar stood. The iconostasis was customarily adorned with icons, some set in specific places – the Virgin on the north side of the ‘Beautiful doors’ (in the centre of the screen), Christ on the south side, next to which would be placed an icon of the church’s patron saint. Only the priests were permitted behind the iconostasis; it is indicative of the religious significance of the Russian coronation, where the tsar enters into a holy marriage with Russia, that during his coronation he receives communion behind the iconostasis, as if he were a priest, for the first and only time, to signify his quasi-holy status.