During his 1698-1699 tenure as the Hapsburg secretary to Peter the Great’s court, Johann Georg Korb detailed the outrageous activities of the Russian court. In a highly sensationalistic account, he claimed to be privy to one of the tsar’s infamous, carnivalesque, religious ceremonies. Dedicated to Bacchus instead of the Christian God, the ceremony began with a procession of vice rather than virtue. Korb rapturously detailed the spectacle of servants parading forward with:

. . . great bowls full of wine, others mead, others again beer and brandy, that last joy of heated Bacchus. . . . they carried great dishes of dried tobacco leaves, with which, when ignited, they went to the remotest corners of the palace, exhaling those most delectable odors and most pleasant incense to Bacchus from their smutty jaws. Two of those pipes through which some people are pleased to puff smoke-a most empty fancy-being set crosswise, served the scenic bishop to confi rm the rites of consecration.1