Abstract
Thus wrote Martyn S. Urbanovich-Piletskii (1780–1859), Councillor of State and member of Ekaterina Tatarinova’s Spiritual Brotherhood, in 1837 to the Holy Synod explaining his motivation for participating in special worships which featured ecstatic spinning and dancing accompanied by praying, singing, and prophecy. These practices were called ‘radeniia’ and adopted from the mystical tradition of Christ-faith;2 participants believed to experience the Holy Spirit descending on them.3
I would like to thank Aleksandr L’vov, Irina Paert and Heiko Haumann for their helpful comments on his article.
… In the churches, where sacramental and ritual services are held in public every day, it is impossible for spiritual people… to devote themselves to free acts and thus to the revelation of the Holy Spirit therein.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The main scholars who have discussed the Christ-faith are K. K. Grass, Die russischen Sekten [The Russian Sects], 2 vols. (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1909–14); J. E. Clay, ‘God’s People in the Early Eighteenth Century. The Uglich Affair of 1717’, Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 26 (1985) 69–124
J. E. Clay, ‘The Theological Origins of the Christ-faith [Khristovshchina]’, Russian History 15 (1988) 21–41
J. E. Clay, Russian Peasant Religion and Its Repression: The Christ-faith (Khristovshchina) and the Origins of the “Flagellant” Myth, 1666–1837 (Ph D diss, University of Chicago, 1989)
A. Etkind, Chlyst. Sekty, Literatura i Revolutsiia [Khlyst. Sects, Literature and Revolution] ( Moscow: NLO, 1998 )
L. Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom. A Russian Folktale ( Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999 )
L. Engelstein, ‘Personal Testimony and the Defence of Faith: Skoptsy Telling Tales’, in L. Engelstein and S. Sandler (eds), Self & Story in Russian History ( Ithaka: Cornell University Press, 2000 ), pp. 330–50.
For the process of fragmentation and personalization of faith in Western Europe, see K. v. Greyerz, Religion und Kultur: Europa 1500–1800 [Religion and Culture: Europe 1500–1800] ( Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000 ).
Cf. Laura Engelstein’s addressing some parallels in the development of the religious culture in Western Europe and Russia in the nineteenth century. L. Engelstein, ‘Holy Russia in Modern Times: An Essay on Orthodoxy and Cultural Change’, Past and Present 173 (November 2001) 129–56.
O. Tsapina, ‘Secularization and Opposition in the Time of Catherine the Great’, in J. E. Bradley and D. K. Van Kley (eds), Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 334–89, cf.
E. A. Vishlenkova, Religioznaia politika: o ficial’nyi kurs i “obshchee mnenie” Rossii aleksandrovskoi epochi [Religious Politics: the Official course and the “common opinion” in Russia of the Age of Aleksandr] ( Kazan: Izd. Kazanskogo universiteta, 1997 ).
A. S. Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii, 1700–1740gg. [Sorcery and Religion in Russia, 1700–40] (Moscow: Drevlekhranilishche, 2000 ), pp. 60–74
on the earlier period, cf. G. B. Michels, At War with the Church. Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999 ).
Cf. E. B. Smilianskaia, Volshebniki, bogokhul’niki, eretiki: Narodnaia religioznost’ i ‘dukhovnye prestupleniia’ v Rossii XVIII v. [Magicians, Blasphemers, Heretics: Popular Religiosity and ’Religious Crimes’ in 18th-century Russia] (Moscow: Indrik, 2003 ), pp. 243–5
G. L. Freeze, ‘The Rechristianization of Russia: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850’, Studia Slavica Finlandensia VII (1990) 101–36.
On the freemasonry in Russia, see D. Smith, Working the Rough Stone. Freemasonry and Society in Eighteenth-Century Russia ( DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999 )
A. I. Serkov, Istoriia russkogo masonstva XIX veka [The History of the Russian Freemasonry in the 19th Century] ( St Petersburg: Izd. im. N.I. Novikova, 2000 )
G. Marker, ‘The Enlightenment of Anna Labzina: Gender, Faith, and Public Life in Catherinian and Alexandrinian Russia’, Slavic Review 59 /2 (2000) 369–90
cf. Rafaella Faggionato, ‘From a Society of the Enlightened to the Enlightenment of Society: The Russian Bible Society and Rosicrucianism in the Age of Alexander I.’, Slavonic and East European Review 79 /3 (2001) 459–87.
For the dispersal of Western European mystics in the early 19th century, see A. N. Pypin, Religioznye dvizheniia pri Aleksandre I. [Religious movements under Aleksandr I.] (Sankt-Petersburg: Akademicheskii Proekt, 2000, repr. 1916 )
H. Haumann, ‘ “Das Land des Friedens und des Heils.” Russland zur Zeit Alexanders I. als Utopie der Erweckungsbewegung am Oberrhein”’ [The Land of Peace and Salvation“. Russia in the Age of Aleksander I. as Utopia of the Pietists from the Upper-Rhine], Pietismus und Neuzeit 18 (1992) 132–54
cf. O. A. Tsapina, ‘The Image of the Quaker and Critique of Enthusiasm in Early Modern Russia’, Russian History 24 /3 (autumn 1997) 215–277.
G. L. Freeze, ‘The Disintegration of Traditional Communities: The Parish in Eighteenth-Century Russia’, Journal of Modern History, 48 (March 1976) 32–50
G. L. Freeze, Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977 )
cf. V. Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 ), pp. 20–1.
V. Fuks, ‘Iz istorii mistitsizma. Tatarinova i Golovin’ [From the History of Mysticism. Tatarinova and Golovin], Russkii vestnik, Jan (1892) 3–31;
Yu.V. Tolstoi, ‘Ocherk zhizni i sluzhby E. A. Golovina’ [Essay on the Life and Service of E. A. Golovin], in P. Bartenev (ed), Deviatnadtsatyi vek. Istoricheskii sbornik, izdavaemyi Petrom Bartenevym, vol. 1 (Moscow 1872), 1–64; RGIA, f. 1018, op. 9, b. d., d. 178, Svedenie o znakomstve gen.-leit. G(olovina) s Tat(arinovoiu) i sviazi s neiu, za tem posledovayshei [Information on the Acquaintance of Lieutenant General Golovin with Tatarinova and about his ensuing Relations with her].
See for example, M.-Fl. Bruneau, Women Mystics Confront the Modern World: Marie de l’Incarnation (1599–1672) and Madame Guyon (1648–1717) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998 ).
Gender aspects cannot be addressed here at length and will be the topic of another publication. For the discussion on gender by the Old Believers, see for example, I. Paert, Old Believers, Religious Dissent and Gender in Russia, 1760–1850 ( Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003 ).
On the ‘feminization’ of Orthodox monasticism, see Brenda Meehan, ’Popular Piety, Local Initiative, and the Founding of Women’s Religious Communities in Russia, 1764–1907’, in S. K. Bathalden (ed), Seeking God. The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia ( DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993 ), pp. 83–106
cf. G. Marker, ‘God of Our Mothers: Reflections on Lay Female Spirituality in Late Eighteenthand Early Nineteenth-Century Russia, in V. A. Kivelson and R. H. Green (eds), Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003 ), pp. 193–209; William G. Wagner, “’Orthodox Domesticity”: Creating a Social Role for Women’ in M. D. Steinberg and H. J. Coleman (eds), Sacred Stories, Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia ( Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press ), pp. 119–45.
R. Cohen, ‘Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology 7 (1978) 379–403
J. Y. Okamura, ‘Situational ethnicity’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 4, nr. 4 (October 1981) 452–65
F. Barth, ‘Introduction’, in F. Barth(ed), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Cultural Difference, 4th edn ( Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1994 ), 9–38
F. Barth, ‘Enduring and Emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity’, in H. Vermeulen and C. Govers (eds), Anthropology and Ethnicity. Beyond Ethnic Groups and Boundaries ( Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 1994 ), 11–32.
T. van Randen, Juden und andere Breslauer. Die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Gro/dstadt von 1860 bis 1915 [Jews and Other Citizens of Breslau. The Relations between the Jews, Protestants and Catholics in a Large German City from 1860 until 1915] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), pp. 19–23, 133–139.
L. P. Karsavin, Osnovy srednevekovoi religioznosti v XII—XIII vekach preimushchestvenno v Italii [The Foundations of the Medieval Religiosity in the 12th–13th Century, mainly in Italy] (Petrograd: Nauchnoe delo, 1915), pp. 3–6. Thanks to Aleksandr L’vov for directing me to this work.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, repr. of the 1st edn 1937), p. 540.
A. Ia. Gurevich, Srednevekovyi mir: Kul’tura bezmolvstvuiushchego bol’shinstva [Medieval World: The Culture of the Silend Majority] (Mosow: Iskusstvo, 1990), p. 49. This notion is not identical with the concept of ‘dvoeverie’ in a sence of a sharp division between the ’elite’ and ’folk’ religiosity. Cf. E. Levine, ’Dvoeverie and Popular Religion’, in Bathalden, Seeking God 31–52.
R. Orsi, ‘Everyday Miracles: The Study of Lived Religion’, in D. D. Hall (ed), Lived Religion on America. Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 3–21.
For the recent research on religion in Russia, working with the concept of ‘lived religion’, see review article by C. D. Worobec, ’Lived Orthodoxy in Imperial Russia’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7,2 (Spring 2006) 329–250; see also Steinberg/ Coleman, Sacred Stories; Kivelson/Green, Orthodox Russia; Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii, 1700–1740gg.; Bathalden, Seeking God.
A. A. Panchenko, Issledovaniia v oblasti narodnogo pravoslaviia. Derevenskie sviatyni Severo-Zapada Rossii [Research on Folk Orthodoxy. Sacred Places in the Villages of Northwest Russia] (St Petersburg: Aleteiia, 1998 ), p. 270.
G. L. Freeze, ‘Institutionalizing Piety. The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850’, in J. Burbank and D. L. Ransel (eds), Imperial Russia. New Histories for the Empire (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 210–49, here p. 215. This diversity, however, still referred to the common grounds of the Orthodox Church as a community constituted by mutual exchanges between the clergy and the lay practitioners. V. Shevzov, ’Letting the People into the Church. Reflections on Orthodoxy and Community in Late Imperial Russia’, in Kivelson and Green, Orthodox Russia pp. 59–77; eadem, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution.
On the Old Belief, see for example, Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia; Paert, Old Believers, Religious Dissent and Gender in Russia; A. Lavrov, “Alter Glaube” and “Neuer Glaube” in einem einzelnen Bezirk: Der Fall Kargopol’ (1653–1700)’ [The “Old Belief” and the “New Belief” in a Single District: The Case of Kargopol’ (1653–1700)1, in A. Kappeler (ed), Die Geschichte Russlands im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert aus der Perspektive seiner Regionen (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 2004), 199–219. For the rejection of tobacco
see R. R. Robson, ‘Old Believers in Imperial Russia. A Legend on the Appearance of Tobacco’, in W. B. Husband (ed), The Human Tradition in Modern Russia (Wilmington, Delaware: A Scholarly Resources, 2000 ), pp. 19–29.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2008 Ekaterina Emeliantseva
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Emeliantseva, E. (2008). Situational Religiosity: Everyday Strategies of the Moscow Christ-Faith Believers and of the St Petersburg Mystics Attracted by This Faith in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century. In: Bremer, T. (eds) Religion and the Conceptual Boundary in Central and Eastern Europe. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230590021_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230590021_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36202-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59002-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)