Therefore, when during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Novgorod was deprived of the last rights of its political independence, and on this basis, apparently, some of the Novgorod clergy had the idea of the possibility of abolishing the cathedral entrances, then in 1551 Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow wrote to the Novgorod Archbishop Serapion: "And the priests should go out in the old way, and if a priest does not come to the exit, And on that he shall have the commandments according to the hryvnia according to the Novgorod one. And the priest will tell her, there was no time to go out, pain for either the woman in labor, or others for needing. And about him to be sent out into the street to search his parish by good people. And they will find out about him that he was not on the way out, and that those priests are not to have a commandment, and which the priest will lie, the parishioners will not say about him during the search: and on that priest the commandment to have in the old way a hryvnia and a well-trodden one" [157] (i.e. , legal costs. — N.U .).

The rite of the conciliar celebration of the evening entrance was an all-Russian, and not any local phenomenon. It was observed in the seventeenth century by the companion of Patriarch Macarius of Antioch, Deacon Paul of Aleppo, in the churches of Moscow [158], in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery [159], in the Gustino-Trinity Monastery [160] and in the Moscow Novodevichy Convent [161]. In Moscow, where the entire multitude of its churches was administratively divided into "magpies" and each "forty" had its own cathedral, the clergy of each "forty" gathered at the entrance to their cathedral, while in the entrances of the Assumption Cathedral, the main church of the capital, participated the "authorities", i.e. the clergy who occupied a high position in Moscow – bishops, archimandrites, abbots, archpriests and "priestly wardens" – officials, close to the modern deans, as well as the clergy of this cathedral [162].

The peculiarity of the Russian evening entrance was that the procession of the clergy from the altar to the middle of the church in the presentation of lamps was performed through the north door with the holy gates closed.  When the deacon, having come to the middle of the church and performed the censing of the holy gates and the icons standing on either side of them, as well as the clergy, asked the primate's blessing "Bless the holy entrance," the sextons opened the holy doors with the push of candlesticks [163]. At first glance, this is a small detail of the entrance, but it was an echo of a very important moment of the ancient Vespers. The latter, as is known, began in the middle of the church, and none of the clergy entered the altar until the evening entrance. This ancient custom, which was known to our ancestors, who once performed Vespers, was not forgotten with the spread of the new monastic and parish rite of Vespers in Russia. Vespers began in the altar, and the holy gates were opened from the outside during the entrance itself.

It should be noted that this detail of the evening entrance was given great importance, so that even after the liturgical reform of Patriarch Nikon and the publication of the Typicon of 1682 , it was observed in certain places, and in the official of the Kholmogory Transfiguration Cathedral, compiled in 1715 , there is a categorical instruction: "Even now they make the entrance, they do not open the royal doors" [164].

After the holy doors were opened, the deacon censed them, exclaiming "Wisdom, forgive" [165], and sang "O Gentle Light..." The singers continued the hymn with the words "holy glory..." [166]. In order to create greater solemnity of the entrance, the anthem was sung in all eight tones, namely:

on Chapter 1 — The Holy Glory of the Immortal Heavenly Father

on chapter 2 — the Holy Blessed Jesus Christ, the Son of God

On Chapter 3 — I will come to the sun in the west

on chapter 4 — having seen the evening light

on chapter 5 — We sing the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God

on Chapter 6 — It is worthy to sing Thee for all time the voices of the monks

on Chapter 7 — The Son of God

on Chapter 8 — Give life to the whole world, for its sake the whole world glorifies Thee.

This is how this hymn is set forth in the hook irmology of Len. Gos. publ. Jbeil. cipher Cyrus. No 577, XVII century. [167]. Such a frequent change of voices in the light of the modern concept of them, as the repeated repetition of two or three monotonous melodic lines, as it was done in the everyday life published in the 19th century by the St. Petersburg Court Chapel, may seem not only unmusical, but generally inconvenient. But it should be borne in mind that at the time when "O Gentle Light" was sung in all eight tones, the voice meant a set of motifs-popevkas of various sizes and intonation. A collection of church songs of the seventeenth century, which once belonged to the Solovetsky Monastery, indicates 217 popevkas for the 1st tone, 280 for the 2nd, 153 for the 3rd, 254 for the 4th, 154 for the 5th, 172 for the 6th, 102 for the 7th, and 347 for the 8th, and 1680 for the eight tones in total [168]. In the light of this, one can imagine how varied and musically meaningful could be "O Gentle Light...", sung in eight tones.