Monastic ('black') clergy The monastic clergy became the object of a full-scale onslaught in the eighteenth century.[109] In medieval Russia they had been the backbone of Orthodoxy, monopolising high religious culture, attracting large numbers to take vows and acquiring vast tracts of populated land. Those material assets, long a temptation for the resource-starved state, became an irresistible target for Peter the Great as he desperately searched for the wherewithal to wage the Northern War. In 1701 he therefore re-established the 'Monastery Office' (monastyrskii prikaz), so unpopular with churchmen in the seventeenth century, to administer monasteries and divert their revenues to the state. After Peter, policy fluctuated between retreat and renewed attack, yet always short of fateful secularisation until an abortive attempt by Peter III in 1762. Catherine at first retreated, but in 1764 carried through the long-sought secularisation. Seeking primarily to pad state coffers (but also to end the mounting unrest among the Church's peasants), Catherine justified sequestration for liberating the Church from worldly cares so that it could focus upon its spiritual mission.[110]The state not only confiscated lands and peasants: it also closed two-thirds of the monasteries and forbade the tonsure of new males and females until the existing surfeit disappeared.[111] Once the surplus monks and nuns were eliminated, the Church found it difficult to attract new recruits; by the 1780s the surfeit had turned into a general shortage of monks and nuns.[112] As a result, by 1825 the number of monks, nuns, and novices (11,080) was less than half its size a century earlier (25,207).
By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, that crisis gave way to a renaissance of monasticism.[113] Most obvious was the sheer increase in the number of monasteries, as the state approved their establishment if they had sufficient financing and, especially, if they could bolster Orthodoxy in minority areas. Hence the number of monasteries, which had fallen to 476 by 1825, climbed to nearly 1,000 by 1914; resident monks, nuns and novices rose about 8.5 times (from 11,080 to 94,629).[114] New recruits came from increasingly diverse social backgrounds, especially in the case of women. No less important was the spiritual renaissance in the monastery, above all, the emergence of elderhood (starchestvo) as the quintessence of Orthodox religiosity.[115]
But the most remarkable feature of the monastic renaissance was the growing predominance of women. Once a minority, by the early twentieth century nuns and female novices had come to constitute a majority of the monastic clergy (77.5 per cent). This process was hardly unique to Russia, occurring as well in the contemporary West. The key factors in the Russian case included a heightened (and ascribed) sense of religiosity among women, breakdown of the patriarchal family (giving women greater autonomy and freedom of choice), the positive role of female cloisters (as hospitals, schools and homes for the elderly) and the Church's growing recognition of women's potential role in combatting dissent and de-christianisation.
Although monasticism was regaining its erstwhile status (and much property as well), it also elicited growing criticism. It was a favourite target of anticlericals, who accused it of harbouring indolence and gluttony, failing to perform useful worldly service, and associating with right-wing forces. Such criticism was also to be heard within the Church, especially among parish clergy, who resented the monastic monopoly of power in the episcopate and ecclesiastical schools. Even among the laity, despite the popular veneration of the monastery's religious significance, there was mounting resentment over monastic landholding amidst the 'land hunger' of late Imperial Russia.
Secular ('white') clergy The secular clergy served primarily in parish churches, but they also staffed cathedrals, institutional churches, cemetery chapels and the like. The secular clergy consisted of two distinct groups: ordained clergy (sviashchennosluzhiteli) and sacristans (tserkovnosluzhiteli). The former included mainly priests (a small number of whom held the honorific title of archpriest) and deacons (d'iakony); only the priest could conduct the liturgy and dispense sacraments. If funding permitted, a parish preferred as well to have the optional deacon, prized for his voice and role in enriching the aesthetics of the liturgy. More numerous were the unordained sacristans (earlier diachok and ponomar', retitled psalomshchik in 1869), who assisted the priest in performing rites and rituals, read the divine liturgy, and helped maintain the church and keep order during services.
The secular clergy increased in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but at a far slower pace than the population. Thus, although the number ofclergy more than doubled between 1722 and 1914 (from 61,111 in 1722 to 117,915), the population of Orthodox believers grew nearly tenfold (from 10 to 98 million). That meant, of course, a substantial rise in the ratio of parishioners to secular clergy, from 1,008 in 1824 to 1,925 in 1914. In many cases, the situation was actually worse: rural parishes often embraced numerous hamlets scattered over a broad, untraversable area, while some urban parishes swelled to gargantuan size (with tens of thousands of 'parishioners'). While this process also affected Western churches, especially Protestants, it had particularly negative consequences for Russian Orthodoxy: because the priest had to perform myriad daily rites, he found it exceedingly difficult to perform the new duties of pastor and preacher, not merely dispense various rituals and sacraments.
Yet those newer duties gained steadily in importance and underlay the Church's drive to educate and 'professionalise' the clergy. Whereas earlier priests had lacked formal education, the new educational network - which took root and expanded steadily after the middle of the eighteenth century - soon made formal seminary study and, later, a full seminary degree a sine qua non for the priesthood. Thus, 15 per cent of the priests had a seminary degree in 1805, but that quotient had jumped to 83 per cent in i860 and reached 97 per cent by 1880. That superior education also generated growing emphasis on a pastoral, not just liturgical, role.[116] But this 'educational revolution' applied only to priests, not deacons and especially sacristans, who had scant formal schooling. As the bishop of Saratov observed in 1850, the priests are well educated, but 'the deacons and sacristans, almost without exception, do not know the catechism'.[117] That educational gap, compounded by disputes over the sharing of parish revenues, was a ubiquitous bane of parish life.[118]
Education also played a role in transforming the secular clergy into a hereditary social estate (dukhovnoe soslovie). Whereas the Church in Muscovy had no educational barriers to the appointment of clergy (who were chosen by parishioners and merely confirmed and ordained by the bishops), educational requirements became a major obstacle to choosing clergy from other social groups: first, because the seminary was open only to the sons of clergy (to avoid wasting the Church's scarce resources on those who would not serve); and, second, because the bishop insisted that the best students (regardless of parish wish) receive appointments. A further obstacle to outsiders was the new poll tax: since the clergy had a privileged exemption, the state was loath to release poll-tax registrants (peasants and townspeople) to the clergy and thus diminish its revenues. While exceptions were possible (if the registrant's community agreed to pay the poll tax), that became increasingly rare after the middle of the eighteenth century.[119] A final factor was the vested interest of the clergy, who preferred to have kinsmen in the same parish. That was partly to avoid the presence of outsiders (deemed more likely to report misconduct or malfeasance), partly to ensure positions for relatives, and partly to provide dowries for daughters and support for elderly clergy (the new cleric agreeing to support his retiring predecessor). Although the Church tenaciously resisted kinship ties within the same parish, these nevertheless persisted and appear frequently in the clerical service registers (klirovye vedomosti).[120]
109
For overviews see Igor Smolitsch,
110
See A. Zav'ialov,
113
For a case study, with attention to the larger context, see Scott Kenworthy, 'The Revival of Monasticism in Modern Russia: The Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1825-1921', unpublished PhD dissertation, Brandeis University (2002).
115
See Robert L. Nichols, 'The Orthodox Elder
116
Handbooks on pastoral service became commonplace, following the seminal volume by Parfenii (Sopkovskii) and Georgii (Konisskii),
117
RGIA, Fond 796, op. 132, g. 1851, d. 2357, l. 311 (Saratov annual report for 1850). Such assessments figure frequently in the parish service records
118
See, for example, the disparaging comments by I. S. Belliustin in his
119
In 1784, only 667 of the 86,671 clergy in the Russian Empire had come from poll-tax origins (0.8 per cent). See RGIA, Fond 796, op. 65, g. 1784, d. 443, ll. 71-85.
120
For example, see similar records from Moscow in 1854 (GIAgM, Fond 203, op. 772, d. 279), 1861 (op. 766, d. 241), and 1880 (op. 766, d. 229), Tver in 1830 (Gos. arkhiv Tverskoi oblasti, Fond 160, op. 1, d. 1672), Irkutsk in 1830 (Gos. arkhiv Irkutskoi oblasti, Fond 50, op. 1, d. 3840), and Kiev in 1830 (Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi istorichnyi arkhiv Ukrainy, Fond 127, op. 1009, d. 275).