Prosphora

Reading notes

• The Bishop §19 prosphoras

  Small round leavened loaves used in the Orthodox Eucharist; worshippers submitted notes "for the health of" or "for the repose of" named people along with them.

• Surgery §10 a communion loaf

  A prosphora, a small round leavened loaf used in the Orthodox liturgy; Vonmiglasov brings one as a customary token gift for the feldsher, as a parishioner might for a priest.

• To N. A. Leikin, 12 October 1891. Moscow. §4 In Moscow there are more celebrities than there are prosphora bakers

  \foreignlanguage{russian}{"Просвирня"} (prosphora baker/seller) was a stock, faintly comic figure of old Moscow -- typically an elderly widow attached to a parish church who baked the small communion loaves (prosphora, \foreignlanguage{russian}{"просфора"}) used in the Orthodox liturgy; with a church on nearly every block, such women were proverbially numerous and unremarkable. Chekhov's comparison -- that celebrities in Moscow outnumber even these -- is a comic exaggeration trading on how commonplace prosphora bakers were assumed to be, deflating the honor of being asked for a celebrity autograph before he even gets to naming names.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 5 March 1891. Moscow. §5 live more modestly than a prosphora-woman

  A proverbial Russian figure of penny-pinching frugality: a "prosvirnya" baked and sold the small ceremonial loaves (prosphora) used in Orthodox liturgy, a trade associated with a spare, thrifty household economy; Chekhov invokes it comically to measure his own careful economizing while unpaid for his unfinished work.