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UDC 94(47).06
Вестник СПбГУ. История. 2016. Вып. 4
Marlyn Miller
FEMALE MONASTICISM IN AN AGE OF CHALLENGE:
THE CONVENT OF THE INTERCESSION IN SUZDAL (1700-1800)*
This study examines how the eighteenth-century assault on monastery property and privilege through secularization attempts affected female monasticism, using as a case study the Convent of the Intercession (or the Protection) of the Mother of God in Suzdal, one of the largest and wealthiest of female cloisters. To some degree, the Intercession convent resembled any large monastery, and hence conclusions about this particular convent may indicate larger patterns in other first-tier monastic institutions. Two avenues are explored: first, how the attempts to sequester church property by Peter the Great and subsequently Catherine II affected the economic position of female monasteries in general and the Convent of the Intercession in particular, and second, how attempts to prevent tonsures influenced both the number of monastics and their social estate. At the Intercession Convent, rationalizing measures under Peter and full-scale secularization under Catherine that sequestered large tracts of land and thousands of peasants resulted in steady decline in monastic assets and revenues. The expropriation of monastic wealth institutionally and economically preceded the final and formal sequestration by Catherine II in 1764. The decline in wealth also had consequences for the number of monastics and their social estate. Coupled with restrictions on tonsure and ultimately the closure of many monasteries, the number of monastics in the empire and at the Intercession Convent fell by about three-quarters over the course of the eighteenth century, causing widespread displacement. As a result of this contraction and a number of social forces, the estate profile of the convent changed as well; in the early eighteenth century large numbers of noblewomen lived at the convent, but by the end of the eighteenth century their number was negligible—they had been replaced by peasants and members of the clerical estate. Unwittingly, Peter's attempts to reduce the number of monastics, in tandem with his selectivity in placement, meant that the nobility were essentially driven out of convent life, allowing for a greater influx of non-nobles. With the secularization of church lands in 1764, Catherine finished what Peter had not been able to do. Although the seizures brought hardship to many monasteries and destroyed complex and long-standing communities, they likely made convents less attractive to elites, which helped accelerate two important processes: the feminization of monasticism, and its democratization, which in turn helped strengthen the bond between the Church and the people, in particular, women. The flowering of monasticism, ironically, owes much to these secularizing rulers. Refs 71.
Keywords: The Intercession Convent, secularization, Peter I, Catherine II, restrictions on tonsure, estate profile, number of monastics.
Марлин Миллер
ЖЕНСКОЕ МОНАШЕСТВО В ВЕК ПЕРЕМЕН:
ПОКРОВСКИЙ ЖЕНСКИЙ МОНАСТЫРЬ В СУЗДАЛЕ (1700-1800)
В статье исследуется влияние секуляризации монастырских земель в XVIII в. на собственность и привилегии монастырей на примере Покровского женского монастыря в Суздале — одного из самых больших и богатых женских монастырей России того времени. Поскольку Покровский женский монастырь был похож в известной мере на любой крупный монастырь России, его изучение поможет пролить свет на положение других образцовых монастырей
Miller Marlyn — PhD, Instructor, Brandeis University; Waltham, MA; Visiting Research Fellow, St. Petersburg Institute of History RAS, 7, ul. Petrozavodskaia, St. Petersburg, 197110, Russian Federation; mmiller@brandeis.edu
Марлин Миллер — PhD, инструктор, Брандейский университет; приглашенный исследователь, Санкт-Петербургский институт истории РАН, Российская Федерация, 197110, Санкт-Петербург, ул. Петрозаводская, 7; mmiller@brandeis.edu
* This research was supported by grant N 15-18-00119 from Russian Science Foundation. Исследование выполнено за счет гранта Российского научного фонда (проект № 15-18-00119). © Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет, 2016
страны в эпоху секуляризации. В центре внимания две проблемы: во-первых, как конфискация церковной собственности, начавшаяся при Петре I и завершившаяся при Екатерине II, повлияла на экономическое положение женских монастырей вообще и Покровского женского монастыря в частности; во-вторых, как меры светских властей по ограничению возможностей пострижения в монахини воздействовали на их численность и сословное происхождение. Ограничение прав Покровского женского монастыря в использовании своей собственности при Петре I и полная секуляризация при Екатерине II, в ходе которой были конфискованы огромные земельные владения и тысячи крестьян, привели к устойчивому снижению размеров монастырской собственности и доходов. Уменьшение монастырского богатства вместе с параллельно происходившими закрытиями многих монастырей и ограничениями на пострижение вело к уменьшению численности монахинь, в особенности из дворянского сословия. В течение XVIII в. в целом по империи, как и в Покровском женском монастыре, число монахинь сократилось на 75 %, а в их составе произошли серьезные изменения. Если в начале XVIII в. среди монахинь преобладали дворянки по происхождению, то к концу столетия им на смену пришли женщины из крестьян и духовенства — дворянки по существу были изгнаны из монастыря. В 1764 г. Екатерина II завершила то, что Петр I не был в состоянии сделать в начале XVIII в. Секуляризация принесла во многие монастыри материальные затруднения и разрушила традиционные сообщества монахинь. Однако, сделав женские монастыри менее привлекательными для элиты, она ускорила процессы феминизации и демократизации монашества, которые в свою очередь способствовали усилению связей между церковью и народом, в частности между церковью и женщинами. Расцвет монашества по иронии судьбы был обязан именно секуляризации, проведенной Петром I и Екатериной II. Библиогр. 71 назв.
Ключевые слова: Покровский женский монастырь, секуляризация, Петр I, Екатерина II, ограничения на пострижение, сословный состав монахинь, число монахинь.
In February 1917, the monarchy appealed to the Synod for support in its most desperate hour—and met with a blunt refusal. Indeed, in the first week of March 1917, the Synod—along with virtually all diocesan bishops and the mass of parish clergy—welcomed the demise of the Romanovs and Rasputin.1 The last decade before the February Revolution had been especially trying, but in fact the alienation of the clergy from the secular state had deep roots that stretched back to the Petrine reforms in the early eighteenth century. The causes of grievance were many, but certainly one of the first and most powerful was the assault of the Petrine state on monasticism—the backbone of Church wealth, the source of ecclesiastical elites, and the institutionalization of Weberian 'virtuoso religiosity'.
The Petrine state and its enlightened absolutist successors brought extraordinary challenges to Russian Orthodox monasticism. In 1700 the Church still had a powerful patriarch, and many monasteries were wealthy and influential, with vast tracts of land and huge numbers of peasants. By 1800, the Church was governed by a collegial body known as the Holy Synod and overseen by a lay ober-prokuror, and the monasteries had lost all their peasants and much of their land. Little is known about the effects of these changes, since monasteries, even more than other parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, have received scant attention—both in general, and more specifically in reference to the eighteenth century and female monasticism. In fact, very few studies appear in English, and of the handful that appear in Russian, none are recent or comprehensive.2 Most importantly,
1 See the historiographic overview in [Freeze forthcoming].
2 General studies of monasticism in Russian include [Zyrianov 1997; Osipov 1997; Kertanova et al. 2000; Sinitsyna 2002]. More specific to the female monasticism are: [Emchenko 2003, p. 171-221; Em-chenko 2002; Kurysheva 2010; Pashchenko 1999; Shafazhinskaia 2009; Bukova 2003]. On the situation in the eighteenth century, see [Bulygin 1977; Lisovoi 2002, p. 186-223; Nechaeva 1998; Vdovina 1988;
few address the eighteenth-century changes in Orthodox monasticism, the institution that was perhaps most altered by the church reforms of Peter the Great and his successors.3
This study examines how that assault on monastery property and privilege affected female monasticism, through a case study of the Convent of the Intercession (Pokrovsky zhenskii monastyr') in Suzdal, one of the largest and wealthiest of female cloisters. To some degree, the Intercession Convent resembled any large monastery, and hence conclusions about this particular convent may indicate larger patterns in other first-tier monastic institutions. But such generalization are highly tentative: monastic institutions were remarkably heterogeneous—some were tiny enterprises with no land and a dozen or so members, while others housed hundreds of monastics and owned thousands of peasant households. Geography and history also had a place in differentiating between monasteries. Older monasteries that had been endowed by tsarist or princely families tended to have more wealth and influence than newer cloisters, and those in outlying districts often had less political and economic clout, and were sometimes used by the government as places of exile. Those near the center, by contrast, were often closely associated with elites and the royal court itself.
Property: Secularization and Impoverishment
The eighteenth century witnessed radical changes in the economic situation of Orthodox monastic houses, including the Intercession Convent. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Convent of the Intercession was a large economic institution, holding more than 2,000 peasant households. This made it the third largest landowner among female monasteries, although a number of male monasteries were considerably larger. Interference by the bishop in convent affairs was minimal, and in times of crisis it was rather the tsar who intervened. It was organized idiorrhythmically (i.e., a communal rule was not observed), and consequently each nun supported herself with a combination of family resources, handicraft sales, and alms. The convent was a large community, in excess of 180 sisters; it was governed by an abbess, who was assisted by a deputy (namest-nitsa), a treasurer, and a council of nun elders. The convent drew its main support from peasants, but also benefited from a substantial number of servitors and craftsmen. It had a long and illustrious history, dating back to the fourteenth century, serving as a destination of pilgrimage for many social elites, but also as a place of imprisonment and forced tonsure for unwanted royal women.
By 1700, the Convent of the Intercession, and monasticism in general, had already become the target of debates about the property of the Russian Church. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the state had attempted to limit the growth of church land ownership, and in times of war, famine, and financial crisis, the government routinely turned to the church for voluntary material aid and imposed extraordinary levies on the clergy. However, the reforms that Peter the Great (r. 1689-1725) was soon to enact were of another quality altogether.
Kozhevnikova 2006; Beglov http://www.eparhia-saratov.ru/Articles/aleksejj-beglov.-russkoe-monashestvo-rubezha-XVIII_XIX-vekov-strategii-vyzhivaniya].
3 Studies in English that treat female monasticism in the eighteenth century include [Meehan 1986, p. 117-142; Meehan-Waters 1986, p. 112-124].
Very early in his reign, Peter attacked what he regarded as the ills of monasticism, including greed, lasciviousness, and idleness. But he had a further reason to restructure Russian monasticism: the Great Northern War, as historians have long emphasized, required vast sums of money, which the monastic institutions seemed to have. The most well-known of Peter's church reforms was the institution of the Spiritual Regulation in 1721, but his measures to reform monastic life began much earlier. Indeed, he took his first action in 1690 to limit the growth of monasteries, requiring 'supreme permission' to found new cloisters, and in 1696 demanded yearly financial accounting. An order to report on grain supplies followed in 1698 [Bulygin 1977, p. 49]. These decrees were merely the prelude to reestablishment of the Monastery Chancellery in 1701, a state office specifically charged with overseeing the monasteries. Apart from deciding not to replace Patriarch Adrian after his death in 1700, Peter appointed a trusted and close associate, Ivan Alekseevich Musin-Pushkin, as head of the Monastery Chancellery.4
A decree of 31 January 1701 placed all clerical estates and their residents under the Chancellery's jurisdiction, and in theory, at least, under its direct administration. Opinions on the effectiveness of this body differ. The pre-revolutionary Church historian A. A. Zav'ialov claims that Peter did not give the Chancellery special instructions, and in the twenty years of its existence it did not function effectively. According to Zav'ialov, the Monastery Chancellery was simply a bureau to impose and collect taxes, and hence Peter did not carry out a full secularization of monastic property. The Soviet historian I. A. Bulygin disagrees. He argues that the decree of 1701 marked a de facto secularization of church lands; the monasteries nominally retained ownership of the land and peasants, but in reality that state had effectively taken command of both. The Monastery Chancellery was to collect all income, return some to the monasteries for their use, and the remainder was to be expended by the Chancellery for almshouses, help for poorer monasteries, and so on [Zav'ialov 1900, pp. 56-68; Hughes 1998, p. 338; Bulygin 1977, pp. 73-133].
As Bulygin shows, the administration of the new Chancellery was anything but haphazard, and in the beginning it already had more than 140 staff members assigned to all levels. The Chancellery oversaw 137,823 peasant households. Bailiffs (prikazniki) were sent to the villages to replace the authority of the former village elders. All collections— from quitrent from the peasants to collections in church or for commemoration of the dead—were to be turned over to the Monastery Chancellery. The state acted as though it were the owner of these church lands, giving away villages, and there is ample evidence that the monastery treasuries were firmly in the hands of the state-appointed stewards (stol'niki). In 1704 all subsidiary properties of economic significance (fishing grounds, mills) were taken by the government, although these were returned several years later.
By December 1701 Peter had established a fixed schedule of support for the inhabitants of monasteries: 10 rubles and 10 chetverti of grain were supplied for each resident monastic, as well as sufficient firewood for each. At the same time, collections began coming in. In 1701 the Chancellery reported receipts of 33,000 rubles, but by 1709 this had risen to 143,956 rubles. However, the Chancellery simply could not cope with this
4 The Chancellery, originally founded in 1649, was not a new phenomenon, but had previously acted as a judicial and tax-collecting organ. After the Church Sobor of 1667, when it was affirmed that civil power did not have the right to try clerical persons, the Monastery Chancellery lost its importance, although it remained until 1677, drawing up lists of church property and collecting taxes and duties. At its closure its duties were assumed by the Chancellery of the Great Court.
administration of so many monasteries, and hence it soon began to give up some of its tasks. In 1705 five outlying dioceses were excluded from the Chancellery's administration, probably because they yielded too little income and, as border territories, were especially difficult to manage. In 1705 Musin-Pushkin halved the allotment for monastics 'because of the Swedish war', which of course generated much discontent among the resident monastic clergy. At the same time he released monasteries with little income to manage their own estates as before, 'since little profit came from them' (the so-called neopredelennye monasteries), and changed the organization of remittances. Instead of sending everything to the Chancellery, monasteries kept their portion and remitted the remainder. Starting in 1707, the estates that had not formerly been released were divided into two kinds: the larger monasteries, numbering about sixty (including the Convent of the Intercession) had direct administration returned to them. While these opredelennye monasteries still owed accounting and payments to the Chancellery, they were once again allowed to run their affairs themselves. Smaller estates (zaopredelennye monasteries) remained under the direct administration of the Monastery Chancellery. Between 1706 and 1710 the bishop's estates were likewise returned to their old management. Bulygin suggests that the completion of the survey of 1705 must have played a part in this as the Chancellery realized the impossibility of efficient management of these estates. After 1710, the Chancellery even gave up direct management of zaopredelennye monasteries, ceding these duties to local administrators. In succeeding years, most zaopredelennye monasteries were returned to their owners. On 17 August 1720 the Monastery Chancellery was closed, and its duties were transferred to the Kamer-Kollegiia, and eventually to the College of the Economy. This timing may have been designed to lessen the clergy's opposition to the abolition of the patriarchate and its replacement with the Holy Synod in the following year [Bulygin 1977, pp. 59-65, 103-123; Cracraft 1971, pp. 113-115, 119].
How much the experiment of the Monastery Chancellery affected cloisters at the root level is difficult to judge, since the available numbers are so inconsistent. The chaos and gaps in the records are in themselves an indicator of how difficult a task the Chancellery faced in managing the lands and peasants of some 1,000 monastic institutions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that at least opredelennye monasteries suffered no lasting hardship as a result of the secularization experiment. That was certainly the case at the Convent of the Intercession, where the abbess, deputy, and treasurer, for example, continued to open their purses and their cells, typically on holidays, to provide wine or beer, and sometimes feasts of fish or offerings of money, for local authority figures, as well as monks and priests from neighboring monasteries and parishes. Prosperity at this convent persisted in the post-Petrine decades as well. On Easter Day in 1744, for example, the abbess offered one ruble and the deputy 50 kopeks to visitors to their cells from 'their priest and brothers and those of the monasteries of the city of Suzdal, and priests and deacons of parish churches' [Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Vladimirskoi Oblasti (hereafter GAVO) f. 575, op. 1, d. 646, l.70, convent decree, 21 March 1744]. The convent continued to keep a full stable of 'superfluous' horses, including 5 grooms, 4 stallions, 26 geldings and 35 mares, and to purchase luxuries such as velveteen and silver for framing icons [GAVO f. 575, op.1, d. 557, l. 23-23ob., roster, March 1740].
But some evidence suggests the Convent of the Intercession, although comparatively wealthy, did suffer a contraction in its economic resources. In 1724, for example, the ab-
bess complained to the Synod that the requirement to support retired soldiers (at the time 14 people), given the small stipends allotted to nuns and the cost of communal meals, caused the nuns to 'have great scarcity and suffer from hunger.' In 1735, the abbess wrote to the Synod that harvest failure made it impossible to feed the large number of female prisoners sent to the Convent, and it needed relief from this extraordinary burden [ODDS 176/75, f. 796, op. 25, 14 April 1724; RGADA, f. 1183, op. 7, d. 27, l. 1, 1735].
For the convent as an economic unit, however, it is very difficult to reconstruct how well, or how poorly, it fared in the Petrine and post-Petrine decades. Characteristically, the convent did not even compile reliable data on the exact number of peasants, let alone the volume or value of what they produced. Marie Thomas reports 22 villages in the seventeenth century, but 28 villages in 5 districts appear on a list for 1718 [Thomas 1983; GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 394, ll. 9ob.-14, roster, 1718]. Since the Sobornoe ulozhenie of 1649 forbade monasteries to acquire new lands by purchase or gift, it is unlikely that these villages were new acquisitions. Central figures for 1724 list 2,012 households and 7,521 souls in 1724 [GAVO f. 575, op. 1, d. 1053, ll. 5-7ob, list, 1759; Rossiiskii Gosudarst-vennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter RGIA), f. 796, op. 1, d. 556, ll. 4-13ob, roster 1724],5 and records for 1740 show 7,993 male souls [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 557, l. 23-23ob, roster, 3 March 1740]. A later report, from 1744, lists 26 villages [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 643, l. 3ob.-5ob.]. A 1759 roster of villages lists 43 villages in five provinces and 13 districts, with a total of 7,456 souls. While there is scattered data on peasant obligations toward the convent, it is not enough to provide a full economic picture.
Establishment of the Synod returned the properties to full Church control, but did nothing to improve financial management. In the post-Petrine decades monasteries still had to show some social utility, and convents like the Intercession had to contribute horses and recruits, support hospitals and almshouses, and perform various other services, but direct intervention by secular or ecclesiastical authorities was minimal. In 1757, Elizabeth turned over the administration of church estates to military officers, with the proviso that monasteries be placed on a regular budget and the surplus funds used to support retired and invalid soldiers [Burbee 2000, p. 56].6 For whatever reason, the government did not implement this declaration, leaving it to Peter III to use its enforcement as a justification for his ill-fated secularization attempt in 1762.
While documentation is sparse for the overall economic health of the convent in the pre-secularization period, reports compiled for the College of the Economy in 1762 and 1763 provide the first comprehensive survey of the convent's property and assets. In 1763, the convent received 586.44 rubles from previous years and collected 2,838.33 rubles of taxable income (quitrent), giving it a total income of 3,424.77 rubles. In the previous year non-quitrent income totaled 31.20 rubles—from contributions for commemorative prayers, church donations, and endowment funds (vklady) for newly tonsured nuns. That is probably an underestimation. This yields 3455.97 rubles which, when added to the remainder from the previous year comes to 3779.88 rubles. In the same year the convent received substantial grain deliveries: 1,438 chetverti of rye, 770 chetverti and 2 chetveriki
5 In this it is among the top three convents in size, after Voznesenskii with 2442 households, 9467 souls and 224 nuns, and Novodevichii, with 2231 households, 11,649 souls and 201 nuns.
6 Few statistics are available, but in 1764, for example, the Convent supported 60 invalid soldiers and 76 retired soldiers, including majors, grenadiers, dragoons, hussars, and sergeants, many of whom also had wives and children.
of oats, 72 chetverti and 1 chetveriki of wheat, 61 chetverti and 2 chetveriki of peas, and 72 chetverti 6 chetveriki of groats, for a total of over 2414 chetverti of grains. The numbers for the previous year are similar—in fact, slightly larger, which might be explained by the widespread peasant unrest in the wake of Peter Ill's secularization announcement [Ros-siiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnykh aktov (hereafter RGADA), f. 280, op. 6, d. 1174, ll. 21ob.-49, income and expense books, 1762 and 1763; f. 280, op. 6, d. 1175, ll. 1ob.-15, income and expense books, 1762-1763].7
Expenses, however, were also significant. The convent paid 1,255.68 rubles in salaries, not only to nuns, but also to servitors, priests, prisoners, retired soldiers and others on monastery support. Total convent expenses came to 2,209.31 rubles. Much of the remainder (approximately 1,000 rubles) was spent on fish, wine, sugar and butter for the abbess's table; wine, incense and so on for church services; payment to support the diocesan seminary (108.18 rubles) and the hospital, a new cell for baking the Host, wax and candles, silver and workmanship to frame icons, and food and money to hand out to guests and pilgrims at important holidays. Unfortunately, the destination of the grain collections is less clear—each nun received 5 chetverti a year, and all others on monastic support also received their share, but this still left a fair surplus. While it may have been sold, there is no evidence to this effect [RGADA, f. 280, op. 6, d. 1177, ll. 1ob.-55ob.; f. 280, op. 6, d. 1176, ll. 24ob.-157ob., expense books 1763].
This abundance of income and grain was to disappear with the secularization of monastic lands and peasants. Peter Ill's attempt at secularization in 1762 provoked widespread resistance, but Catherine carried it out successfully a mere two years later. The empress had revoked her husband's unpopular decree, but established a Commission on Church Lands to study the question. The Commission was charged with drawing up an inventory of church property, and making recommendations on how they were best to be managed [Burbee 2000, p. 88]. On 12 May 1763, Catherine established the College of the Economy (Kollegiia ekonomii) to manage Church assets, and then issued the decree for secularization itself on February 26, 1764 [PSPR, vol. 1, no. 166, 167, pp. 166-200]. Catherine justified secularization with the customary rhetoric of utility and general welfare (obshchee blago). In her words: 'Who is able to appear so unreasonably and audaciously before God, who had not exhorted the people, according to the faith of Christ which we teach, that the grandeur of the church should be used for this virtue: care of beggars, the aged, and those who have served the faith and the Homeland and are wounded and sick?' [Burbee 2000, p. 149-50]8
Whatever the real motive, the legislation transferred all Church real estate and peasants to the secular domain and the control of the College of the Economy. Henceforth 'economic peasants' were to provide a soul tax of 1.50 rubles per year, starting 1 January 1764, and be relieved of all other burdens. For the monastic clergy, the government adopted a table of organization (shtat) that provided payments for a predetermined number of personnel, as well as additional funds for upkeep and church needs. It divided monasteries
7 Peter had instituted a secularization of church lands on 21 March 1792; many peasants 'believed that the decree had actually granted them full freedom and that it was only a first step toward general emancipation.' Peasant disorders were frequent from that time, and were likely a chief motivation for Catherine's more orderly secularization attempt [Raeff 1970, p. 1289-1310].
8 Translated by Burbee from Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, first series (St. Petersburg: Tip. II Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva Kantseliarii, 1830), vol. 16, no. 12060 (26 February 1764).
into three classes, the higher classes being allotted more monastics and larger stipends. According to the decree, surplus funds were to be used for almshouses and hospitals, and for the support of retired soldiers, widows, and orphans. The Commission predicted that the 1.50 collection would produce 1,366,299 rubles from the 910,866 peasants reported to reside on church lands. The shtat itself (which included support for 26 almshouses) would cost 513,963.92 rubles yearly. Previous commitments and support for the College of Economy brought the total to 694,780.52 rubles, still just over half of the collected monies. The remainder (671,518.48 rubles) was to fund the diocesan seminaries and indeed was responsible for the steady growth of formal education among parish clergy in the last four decades of the eighteenth century [Freeze 1977, p. 78-106].
Notwithstanding rhetoric about 'surplus,' in fact the monastic clergy, male and female alike, found that the shtat provided support for far fewer monastics, and indeed minuscule sums for those who were to remain. To be sure, much depended upon which of the three classes a particular monastery was assigned to. First-class male monasteries, of which there were 15, were to maintain 58 people (24 of them servants) with an annual salary of 2,017.50 rubles. Second-class monasteries (41 in all) were allowed 34 residents (including 16 servants) and 1,311.90 rubles, while the third class monasteries (100) were to have 21 residents, including 8 servants, with a budget of 806.50 rubles. There were only four female monasteries of the first class, which housed between 101 and 52 nuns, and did so on a stipend ranging between 2009.80 rubles and 1506.80 rubles. Eighteen second-class convents survived on 475.80 rubles each for a complement of 17 nuns, while 45 third-class convents (also with 17 nuns) had to manage with 375.60 rubles.
How did the Convent of the Intercession fare under the new order? It received a total income of 1,906.80 rubles, 400 rubles of which was the 'additional sum' that Catherine had allotted after realizing the miserliness of the shtat. The abbess received 100 rubles, the treasurer 50, and each nun 12 rubles, while the table also supported priests, deacons and servants. The shtat provided 150 rubles for the needs of the church, with an additional 338.50 rubles for repairs and upkeep. Additional funds had to be spent to support displaced nuns. Given that in the year 1762 the convent had spent three hundred rubles more than this, and had another thousand remaining in the bank, not to mention what must have been hundreds of bushels of grain in storage, the shtat must have indeed seemed parsimonious [PSPR, v. 1 1764, no. 166 and 167, pp. 166-200].
After secularization finances were a continual problem, sowing discontent and causing administrative headaches. The shtat payments were much too low, and frequently late [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1237, l. 11, 10 June 1784]. The so-called 'additional sum,' which Catherine disbursed as a means of coping with this inadequate allowance, was a point of contention in an incident in 1776, when nuns and servitors complained to the bishop that the abbess was withholding their portion. Clearly, the shtat was not sufficient, especially when compared with the assets and income received before secularization. The abbess, used to nearly unlimited financial freedom, was obviously attempting to supplement her income, while the nuns and clergy who complained believed that they were being deprived of what was legally intended for them. A dearth of sisters and novices because of limited stipends caused the sacristans to complain—they were expected to do too much since there were no longer enough nuns to carry out readings, ring church bells, and heat stoves. The sacristans asserted that they 'have sufficient work without reading'. Nor were the deacons or priests happy, and they fought about the division of income from the liturgies,
complaining that they lived in the 'greatest insufficiency'. [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1198, l. 7, consistory decree, 11 March 1776; l. 27 consistory ukaz, 10 June 1776; ll. 40-41ob., 12 August 1776]. The baker of the Host complained that she was not receiving the usual 5 rubles a year that she was allotted for firewood and flour [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1277, l. 22, 22 December 1794]. Gradually, however, the Convent expanded its income. The Synod and state, realizing to some extent the tenuous position of convents (as inflation devoured their moderate budgets), began to authorize the acquisition of small amounts of land.9 The monasteries also labored to augment their incomes by soliciting donations and even selling prized valuables. But ultimately it was society that came to the aid of monasteries by providing a growing stream of donations and bequests, proof of increasing support for monastic houses by the populace.
In short, secularization of monastic assets was a protracted process, initiated by Peter the Great and fully realized by Catherine. Whatever the aggregate impact on the Church, secularization was especially devastating for elite monastic institutions like the Convent of the Intercession. It had much to lose, and lost most of it. That drastic decline in wealth— and attractiveness—of a premier institution like the Convent of the Intercession was to have significant consequences on the number and, especially, the profile of women choosing to take monastic vows.
Personnel: Social Profile of Nuns at the Convent
Peter came to the throne with a low opinion of the monastic estate and promptly made that attitude abundantly clear. In the Supplement to the Spiritual Regulation (1722) he declared that the monastic estate had lost its way and was in need of drastic reform, and in 1724 he sent a memorandum proclaiming that 'much evil is caused as the greater majority [of monks] are parasites (tuneiadsy) and since the root of all evil is idleness, the number of superstition-mongers, schismatics and also rebels created in the past is well-known'. [Hughes 1998, p. 343]. Peter believed not only that monks and nuns should support themselves with the work of their own hands but also, from the perspective of 'state interest' (interesy gosudarstva), there were too many monastics in his realm.
Peter began restricting the number of monks and nuns soon after the beginning of his reign, and his successors consistently followed that policy as well. Very large communities were increasingly reduced in size through a policy of not allowing tonsures, and smaller monasteries were merged with larger ones. In 1701 Peter set the minimum age of tonsure at 40; since there had not previously been an established age, boys as young as 10 had at times been tonsured. In 1703 he ordered all novices to leave their monasteries, and in future new novices were not to be allowed under threat of exile and imprisonment. In the Spiritual Regulation the age for tonsure was changed to 30 for men and 60 'or at least 50' for women, which remained in force until 1832 [Muller 1972, p. 79]. On 28 January 1723 tonsure was outright forbidden, and a year later another prohibition restricted tonsure for most, with the exception of retired priests and soldiers. His successors continued this policy. Under Elizabeth, tonsure could only be carried out with a decree from the Synod,
9 Boris Mironov has demonstrated significant inflation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries particularly in times of war. Using a retail price index for grains, with the years 1701-10 as a base (with a value of 100), the index rose steadily to 1024 in 1871-80, dropped to 801 in 1891-1900, and rose again to 1031 in 1911-14 [Mironov 1992, p. 459].
unless it were a widowed priest or deacon, and no tonsures were allowed in convents with little land. Only for a short period during the reign of Peter II were tonsures allowed. Even stricter limits were put in place under Anna. On 10 June 1734, she issued a decree stating that only widowed deacons and priests might become monks, and violations would be punished by a fine of 500 rubles to the bishop, and defrocking and banishment to heavy work for the heads of the monasteries. Clearly 500 rubles was a preposterous sum, and on 11 March 1735 it was reduced to 10 rubles, and those in violation were to be brought to civil court and liable to public punishment, as well as being deprived of their status as monks, and sent to their former places of residence [Emchenko 2003, p. 171-221].
The repetition of these decrees suggests that they were being ignored, as in fact they were. In 1734 Archbishop Pitirim of Nizhnii Novgorod ordered an accounting from monasteries of the monastics who had been tonsured without the Synod's permission, and the numbers were significant. While the number of illegal tonsures varied by cloister, the Convent of the Intercession had tonsured 40 nuns in the intervening years. But there were also ways to circumvent the law. Afanasii, the bishop of Suzdal, compromised: he defrocked twenty-seven of the women, but spared thirteen. Afanasii asserted that twelve of these women had been approved by the archbishop himself, and one had been ordered, also by the archbishop, to transfer from another monastery to act as convent deputy. Of the 27 defrocked, ten were allowed to remain as novices, since the report of Abbess Margarita, namestnitsa Kapetolina and treasurer Maremiana claimed that these women had resided in the convent from their early youth (maloletstvie) with their relatives. They had learned to read and write in the convent, led irreproachable lives, and had served as choristers. Several of them had no living parents, and their only connections were in the monastery; moreover, the monastery did not have enough choristers and those present were elderly. Most of the defrocked were still very young and should not be exposed to the temptations of the world; and one was 92 years old, blind, senile, and homeless, and could not in good conscience be cast out [RGIA, f. 796, op. 15, d. 350. ll. 198-205, Report from Afanasii, Bishop of Suzdal, 2 September 1734].
Restrictions continued, however. In 1740, after Anna's death, tonsure was allowed to those with the requisite permissions, but in 1741 express imperial permission became necessary. On 25 September 1761 authorities allowed tonsures with the permission of the diocesan bishop, but imposed new restrictions throughout the reign of Catherine.
As a result, the number of nuns decreased significantly over the course of the eighteenth century, even before Catherine's famous secularization of 1764. While overall figures sometimes diverge, they do show a steady drop for male and female monastics from 25,207 in 1724 to 12,392 in 1762 (from 14,534 male and 10,673 female to 7659 male and 4733 female) [Smolitsch 1997, p. 563]. The number of cloisters decreased as well: from 965 male and 236 female (1,201 total) in 1701, to 954 total in 1764. The Synod gives somewhat different (and apparently incomplete) figures: 910 monasteries in 1762 had 10,009 monastics [Zav'ialov 1900, pp. 346-347]. The records for the Convent of the Intercession provide a graphic picture of this decline in what had been an elite monastic institution. The Convent housed 180 nuns in May 1723, but this fell by several a month due to natural causes thereafter. In July 1724, no doubt as a result of Petrine rationalizing measures, several local convents were 'attached' to the Convent of the Intercession in an attempt to close them. The Nikolaevskii (founded in 1617) and Dmitrievskii (founded in the ancient period of Kievan Rus') convents in Suzdal, each with 16 members, were
merged with the Intercession Convent, and the rural Znamenskii convent, with 19 members, was amalgamated with the Blagoveshenskii-Dunilovskii convent of 30 members, the new entity being placed under the Intercession's mantle. This brought the total to 236 by December 1724. Under Bishop Ioakim (1726-31) the Nikolaevskii convent was joined to the Aleksandrov convent directly across the river from the convent of the Intercession. What happened to the other 'attached' convents is unclear, although none remained by 1764 and they were probably absorbed into the population of the monastery [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 392, ll. 1-5, 1723-1724; Zverinskii 2005, vol. 3, p. 100, p. 60, p. 20].
By 1730 the Convent population had fallen to at least 114 residents, since this was the size of the sobor that elected the new abbess. Whether this number consisted of nuns only, or includes novices as well, is unclear [RGADA, f. 1439, op. 1, d. 197, l. 36, 12 November, 1730]. This number decreased substantially by the next accounting, due to the restrictions on tonsure. In 1761, 57 sisters and 5 novices were listed, close to the number that the convent was ultimately assigned in the 1764 reform.
A list of novices awaiting tonsure in 1764 provides a social profile of monastic recruitment and restrictions on tonsure in the eighteenth century. Of the 32 women whose social origin is known (out of a total of 36), 3 came from military families, 7 from clerical families, 1 from the urban estates, 1 from the nobility, and 20 from the peasantry. The vast majority of these women (24) had entered the convent in the 1740s, and consequently had waited approximately twenty years to be tonsured. Compared to a pre-Petrine novice, who might expect to serve for a few years and then take the veil, this is an extraordinary change and obviously intended to deter women from pursuing monastic careers [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1144, ll. 42-46, Roster of monastics 1764]. Conditions improved somewhat by the late eighteenth century, when the average novitiate lasted 13 years. The demographic profile among novices is similar—among the 47 women waiting for tonsure, 1 was military, 7 clerical, 1 noble, 1 from the merchant estate, and 37 from the peasantry [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1284, ll. 1-81, Roster of novices 1795].
The implementation of Catherine's shtat in 1764 had dire consequences for the monks and nuns of the Russian empire.10 Of the 10,000 to 12,000 monastics reported just prior to secularization, only about half (5,105) were given places on the shtat. The legislation provided for only 159 male monasteries with 2,814 monks, and 67 female monasteries with 1,366 nuns (totals that include abbots and abbesses) [PSPR, v. 1 1764, nos. 166 and 167, pp. 166-200]. This was but a fraction of the thousand or so monasteries and ten to twelve thousand monastics on the eve of secularization [Zav'ialov 1900, p. 346-47].
In an effort to compensate for the fact that so many monasteries were left without support, a decree of 31 March 1764 announced that a number of male monasteries not included in the shtat would be allowed to remain open and support themselves as zashtatnye or unfunded monasteries, which did little to improve the situation of female monasteries. This left between 418 and 523 monasteries in the empire to be simply closed, and turned into parish churches if possible. In other cases they became service institutions such as schools and hospitals [Burbee 2000, p. 190].
Naturally, this reduction in the monastic population caused large-scale displacement. In the case of the Convent of the Intercession, the problem of excessive nuns was not devastating, but the impact on other convents that still had a large resident population
10 The scant available material on the 1764 secularization includes: [Burbee 2000; Leonard 1993; Madariaga 1981, p. 111-22; Tsapina 2001, p. 334-89; Meehan-Waters 1993; Zav'ialov 1900].
was especially severe. Catherine attempted to remedy this by outlawing new tonsures. In September 1766, the empress provided salaries for those additional monastics residing in shtatnye monasteries. With this ukaz, a total of 10,067 individuals, 2,984 of them women, were supported (at least temporarily) by the shtat [Burbee 2000, 138-191].
For those that remained without a place, options were few. Some nuns turned their communities into zhenskie obshchiny (women's religious communities) [Meehan-Waters 1986, p. 112-124]. Others resorted to begging in the cities, prompting imperial edicts on mendicancy. Displaced nuns were also resettled to existing convents—the Convent of the Intercession, for example, absorbed the population of the closed Aleksandrov and Trinity monasteries, including two abbesses and 22 nuns, until future vacant places opened up for them elsewhere. This not only had the effect of making places for new postulants harder to acquire, but cost the convent dearly. They were expected, from the so-called 'additional sum' allotted by Catherine, to supply for abbesses the full portion of a nun on shtat, and for the nuns themselves, a half-portion [GAVO, f. 575, op.1, d. 1145, ll. 86-87, 17 August 1764, decree from the Suzdal Spiritual Consistory].
In the 1770s, many of the women who had long been waiting to take the veil were finally allowed to do so. At the Convent of the Intercession, an ailing peasant who had served as a novice for 32 years was tonsured, as was a sergeant's wife who had been there for 26 years. There were a high proportion of widows among the newly tonsured, which left little room for the unmarried to find a place in the convent. How unnatural that state of affairs was can be seen by an immediate reversion to a more balanced demographic in the late eighteenth century—of the 43 nuns in the convent at the turn of the nineteenth century, only 9 were widows [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1195, ll. 51-51ob., 18 November 1775; ll. 58-58ob.; 4 December 1775, ll. 60-60ob., 14 December 1775; ll. 62-62ob., 16 December 1775].
Conditions for tonsure were somewhat worse at the nearby Convent of the Dormi-tion in Aleksandrov. Perhaps because it was in a more heavily populated urban area, or because the petitioners, as peasants, had to wait longer than others, the wait for tonsure had taken on epic proportions by the end of the eighteenth century. In 1794 thirteen peasant women petitioned for the veil, with an average age of 63, and an average time in the novitiate of 38 1/3 years. All but two of the women had entered the convent in the 1730s, many when in their early 20s.
One of the most important changes was the demographic shift in the eighteenth-century monastic population and in the character and expectations of monasticism itself. Shtatnye positions for nuns allowed poorer women to join convents, but well before this, and more importantly, the prohibition of tonsure for most of the century had the effect of driving the privileged (above all, the nobility) away from the convent.
There had been a long association between convents, particularly wealthy ones such as the Convent of the Intercession, and the nobility. Noblewomen founded convents and often retired or were forcibly exiled there. Many noblewomen lived at the convent, and a number of tsaritsas, tsarevnas, and grand princesses are buried there, including Solomo-nia Saburova, the barren wife of Grand Prince Vasilii III. Additionally, Evdokiia, the first wife of Peter the Great, spent time in exile at the Intercession convent [Pushkareva 1997, 65, 127-128; Semevskii 1861, 560-561].
Nevertheless, it is clear that noblewomen, while maintaining powerful positions in convents, were never the majority there. It has been suggested that only in the nineteenth
century did monastic institutions witness a certain democratization. This may be true for male cloisters, which as a rule were smaller, and whose inmates had the chance of advancing to positions in the diocesan hierarchy, but in female institutions it appears that at least from the eighteenth century the lower social orders already made up the majority of residents. In 1730, for example, the 'whole sobor' of the convent petitioned for a new abbess and namestnitsa, which consisted of a treasurer, 2 council elders, 8 choristers, 4 sacristans, 15 noblewomen, and 'the rest.' Fortuitously, we know that the convent contained 101 nuns in 1740, and if we allow that the convent administration was uniformly noble, that still means that those of noble rank formed less that 30 percent of the total [RGADA, f. 1439, op. 1, d. 257, ll. 1-1ob., March 1740 petition to Archibishop Simon of Suzdal; GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 557, l. 24ob., roster, March 1740]. Data from other female monasteries suggests that the rest of the numbers were made up by peasants and members of the clerical estate, as well as a number of soldier's wives and daughters, with a few women from the urban estates, and that estate composition likely depended in part on the rural or urban situation of the monastery [RGIA, f. 796, op. 15, d. 350, ll. 68-77, September 1734; RGADA, f. 1183, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 2ob.-5ob., February 1740; RGADA, f. 18, op. 1, d. 146, ll. 1-5ob.].
Better documentation is available for the latter half of the eighteenth century. From 1764, of course, the number of nuns had been fixed at 52, including the abbess. At the turn of the nineteenth century, there were 42 nuns, 1 abbess, and the remaining 7 places on the shtat were, for reasons unknown, taken by nuns in the Kiev and Chernigov dioceses. Of these nuns the overwhelming number, 27, were peasants, two were daughters of government officials, and thus likely noble, 5 were merchants' daughters, and 8 were from the clerical estate. The abbess herself was from the class of petty officials. Thus the percentage of noble nuns had dropped to roughly 4 percent. In addition, there were 59 novices in the convent. One of these was from the nobility, five from the merchant class, nine from the clerical estate, and fully 44 from the peasantry. Although their ages are unfortunately not given, they had averaged 11.5 years in the novitiate, with several of them having already served for 28 years [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1328, ll. 1ob.-2, 14-18ob., 16 December 1803]. The proportion of noble entrants would drop further, to 0.98 percent in 1795 [GAVO, f. 575, op. 1, d. 1284, ll. 1-8, 1795].
It is clear that the Convent of the Intercession was undergoing a steady democratization in its social composition. This was at least partly due to the restrictions on tonsure, in particular Peter's emphasis on tonsuring clerics and those of military origin, but that does not fully account for the significant rise in peasant entrants. There are several reasons why the peasantry provided so many recruits to female monasteries. First, peasant women were not liable to the poll tax and so were not constrained by poll-tax revisions (and state laws restricting the tonsure of poll-tax registrants). They were also of lesser importance to the family economically, and often orphans—a monastic career removed a burden on the commune or the extended family. Perhaps, even at this relatively early date, women had already begun to exhibit the higher level of religiosity that was to become so salient in the nineteenth century all across Europe, Russia included.
Other estates joined for their own reasons. Peter's emphasis on tonsuring kinswomen of the military explains their preponderance—in effect, Peter turned convents into a social support for women widowed by war. Significantly, after 1764, once war widows were no longer guaranteed monastic places and corresponding support, their numbers fell precipitously. Clerical numbers would also decline, although not immediately. As Gregory Freeze
has shown, the clergy were in the process of becoming a caste-like estate in the eighteenth century, and this produced clerical sons with no hope of a position, but it also produced a corresponding number of clerical daughters who were unlikely to marry because their potential husbands were joining monasteries or had been conscripted into the army. As a privileged estate exempt from the restrictions of the poll-tax population, clerical daughters had no barriers to entering the monastic estate, and were no doubt aided by the paternalistic attitude of bishops toward clerical families.
The question remains why the numbers of noblewomen contracted so significantly. Peter's 'emancipation' of noblewomen from the confines of Orthodox tradition, although it influenced only the most elite, was likely one factor in the decline, as was the new possibilities under Catherine for a certain measure of female autonomy. Also in this period the nobility, supported by salaries and land-grants for state service, may have no longer felt as much need to retire to monastic institutions, and they certainly found it more difficult to find places there. Finally, as the few available places were reserved for clerical and military women, noblewomen lost their hold on the power structure of the convent, and it became a less attractive place for noblewomen to live.11
The continuing democratization that continued into the nineteenth century and that was an important factor in the nineteenth-century monastic revival cannot be understood apart from Peter and Catherine's reforms: although highly critical of monasticism, Peter did set in motion stricter rules and a more serious devotion to monastic life. His emphasis on the charitable functions of monastic institutions changed the way that monasteries saw themselves, and paved the way for a renaissance of charity in the nineteenth century. Most importantly, if unwittingly, his attempts to reduce the number of monastics, in tandem with his selectivity in placement, meant that the nobility were essentially driven out of convent life, allowing for a greater influx of non-nobles. With the secularization of church lands in 1764, Catherine finished what Peter had not been able to. Although the seizures brought hardship to many monasteries and destroyed complex and long-standing communities, they likely made convents less attractive to elites, which helped accelerate two important processes: the feminization of monasticism, and its democratization, which in turn helped strengthen the bond between the Church and the people, in particular, women.12 Unintended consequences of secularization also included the development of creative new communal forms, and removal of the burdens of estate management freed monastics to devote themselves more fully to the monastic calling. The flowering of mo-nasticism, ironically, owes much to these secularizing rulers, and the response of the monastic estate to the challenges placed before them.
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For citation: Miller M. Female Monasticism in an Age of Challenge: The Convent of the Intercession in Suzdal (1700-1800). Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. History, 2016, issue 4, pp. 87-103. DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu02.2016.408
Received: 28 May 2016 Accepted: 2 September 2016
