In 1914 E. V Anichkov, equating an understanding of confessional theology with religious belief, wrote that only from the fifteenth century did the peasantry become Christian. Anichkov might have included elites in his indictment, because most evidence of religious culture concerns princes, landowners, prelates and monks.[139] It was a culture in which the literacy of the clerical elite, judging by the manuscript legacy extant in Rus', was within a narrow range of liturgical books, collections of sermons and homilies, chronicles and lives of saints. Until about 1500 little was translated locally and, excepting hagiogra- phy, original works were few. Prelates, originally from monastic brotherhoods, might obtain grounding in canon law and theology, and the aristocracy and urban well-to-do may have had a functional literacy in the language of clerks; but the populace, Archbishop Gennadii Gonzov of Novgorod complained to Metropolitan Simon about 1500, was so ignorant that 'there is no one to select to be a priest'.[140] Although they were not to ordain priests or deacons lacking a proper education, prelates had little choice but to do so. Yet it would be a mistake to view popular religiosity as other than rich, diverse and, by the sixteenth century, distinctive.
Popular religiosity
Russian Orthodoxy added many feasts to the liturgical cycle inherited from Constantinople. But without regular or centralised procedures of canonisation, no calendar was the same. The Stoglav warned of lay persons who were false prophets of miracles or revelations, but central authorities, when confronted with popular cults promoted by local clerics, usually capitulated.5 Thus, in 1458 the clergy in Ustiug reported healings at the grave of the holy fool Prokopii (d. 1303). In 1471 a church went up at his gravesite; by 1500 there was a biography reporting miracles and powers of prophecy. Finally, in 1547 a council designated Prokopii a local saint (8 July). Nor could authorities ignore the Muscovite cult of the holy fool Vasilii the Blessed (d. 1552?). His ostensibly foolish behaviour and insults - even to the ruler - followed from an ability to see truths invisible to others. When his grave became known for healings, Tsar Fedor I had Vasilii reburied in a chapel adjoining the church of the Intercession on Red Square in 1588. So great was his following that the church to which his chapel was attached to this day is known by his name (St Basil's).6 But most saints entering the calendar in the sixteenth century - sixteen of at least twenty-one - were monastic founders whose successors exhumed their relics and promoted their miracles. For example, Hegumen Gelasii initiated the cult of Savva Visherskii who had founded a monastery near Novgorod in the 1450s. It became famous because Archbishop Iona had hagiographer Pakhomii the Serb write Savva's biography. The Church recognised Savva a 'national' saint by 1550. Of fourteen 'earlier' saints about whom hagiographers wrote biographies, eight were monks and one a nun.
Muscovite expansion shaped the accretion of new feasts. After its conquest by Moscow, Novgorod prelates refused to observe feast days of Muscovite
Olga Raevsky-Hughes (eds.), Slavic Cultures in the Middle Ages (Christianity and the Eastern Slavs, vol. i) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 179-86; Emchenko, Stoglav, pp. 285-6; Jack E. Kollmann, Jr., 'The Stoglav Council and Parish Priests', RH 7 (1980): 66-7, 74-6.
5 Richard D. Bosley 'The Changing Profile of the Liturgical Calendar in Muscovy's Formative Years', in A. M. Kleimola and G. D. Lenhoff (eds.), Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359-1584 (Moscow: ITZ-Garant, 1997), pp. 26-38; Emchenko, Stoglav, pp. 311-12.
6 Slovar' knizhnikov i knizhnosti Drevnei Rusi, vol. ii, ed. D. S. Likhachev (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1988-9), pt. 1, pp. 322-4; Natalie Challis and Horace W Dewey, 'Basil the Blessed, Holy Fool of Moscow', RH 14 (1987): 47-59.
saints. Thus, hegumens of its major monasteries refused to participate when Gennadii, the archbishop appointed by Moscow, organised a procession on 8 December 1499 during which he conducted services to Moscow's metropolitan saints Peter and Aleksei. Gennadii thereupon compromised; in a procession a week later the hegumens joined him in a procession that included services to the Muscovites, but also to St Varlaam Khutynskii of Novgorod.[141] Metropolitan Makarii vigorously promoted the nationalisation of the calendar. In 1547 a council recognised as 'all-Russian' saints eighteen persons whose feasts had been celebrated locally. Makarii gained recognition for at least fifteen more 'all- Russian' saints, probably at a council in 1549. Reflecting on the canonisations in his 'Life of Savva Krypetskii of Pskov' (1555), hagiographer Vasilii wrote that the Russian land, like Constantinople, the second Rome, radiated with feasts of many saints. 'There', he said, 'Mohammedan falsehoods of the godless Turks had destroyed Orthodoxy, while here the teachings of our holy fathers ever more illuminate the Russian land.'[142] The councils failed to establish procedures for canonisation and no calendar of'all-Russian' saints resembled another. But universal calendars reflecting these canonisations henceforth were celebrated throughout Russia.
To celebrants the original meaning ofnumerous feasts became intertwined or confused with traditional rites coinciding with the summer and winter solstices or with periods in the agricultural cycle. On the eve of the Epiphany, for the Orthodox a celebration of Christ's baptism, revellers proceeded to the river to immerse themselves symbolically in the river Jordan in a rite of purification.[143] Passion Week, with its promise of renewal, and Trinity Saturday (the eve of Pentecost), contained echoes of reverence for the Slavic pagan sun god Iarilo, who in the spring was reborn to assure bountiful crops. On these occasions celebrants commemorated ancestors with offerings and enquired of the dead about prospects for their salvation. Peasants drove livestock to pasture on St Gregory's day and prayed to Elijah against drought. Russians also prayed to icons of saints and inscribed them on amulets integrating folkways - in which signs, portents and intercessions were phenomena capable of upsetting, or setting right again, the moral order - with faith that Christian saints possessed powers to heal, to benefit the salvation of souls or to keep families and communities in equilibrium. Mary, as Mother of God, was an intercessor for or against just about anything. Women turned to St Paraskeva- Piatnitsa, venerated originally as a martyr, to secure a marriage or a birth and to guide them in domestic matters. Women prayed to Saints Gurios, Samonas and Abibos to suppress hostile thoughts towards their husbands, to St Conon to cure children of smallpox.10
139
E. V Anichkov,
140
142
V O. Kliuchevskii,
143
Emchenko,