Ancient religious tracts are full of advice on the value of self-abnegation and suffering. For example, the Izmaragd (Emerald, which originated in the fourteenth century) characterizes humility as “the mother of virtues,” advises children to serve their parents “with fear as a slave,” and tells wives to obey their husbands “in silence.” Misfortunes are sent by a loving God to give people an opportunity to save their souls or even gain glory: “Sorrows and pains make the sufferers glorious, as gold in fire becomes still brighter.”11
The tradition of religious asceticism, which in Slavic lands began in about the tenth century and continues down to the present day, offers numerous examples of the active quest for suffering. The young Saint Theodosius (ca. 1108–74) mortified his flesh with iron chains hidden under his shirt, or exposed his body to stinging gnats. He was later known to sleep sitting, to eat a very meager diet, to beat his head against the floor while praying, etc.12 Fedotov says that the “relatively moderate ascetic exercises” (sic) of this saint were supplemented by constant labor, such as grinding wheat, cutting wood, or hauling water.13
Saint Sergei of Radonezh (1314–92) wore uncouth garb, practiced heavy manual labor, would go for days without food, and adamantly refused to be elevated in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, according to his biographer Epiphanius the Wise. His holy ideal was poverty, and in this he “imitated his Master Jesus Christ our Lord.”14
Saint Irinarkh of Rostov (d. 1616) always walked barefoot and wore chains and a hair shirt. Bolshakoff says: “After his death a collection of iron and copper chains, belts and helmets was found in his cell.”15
Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833) was adept at fasting. One report has it that he ate nothing but grass for three years.16 When consulted by the holy woman Anastasiia Logacheva (1809–75) he recommended that she wear chains to quell her carnal lust. Anastasiia evidently followed this advice, for upon her death penitential chains were found beneath her clothing.17
The masochistic practices of many of the holy monks were accompanied by paranoid fantasies or hallucinations (“demonology” is the theological euphemism for this). Theodosius said he was haunted by a “black dog” while praying. The recluse Isaac was pestered by demons who tricked him by taking the form of angels. The “much-suffering” John went about in nothing but chains and once tried to relieve his suffering by digging himself into the earth, where he experienced a terrible hallucination: “Over his head he saw the mouth of a horrible serpent belching flames. When the paschal night came, the serpent took the recluse’s head and arms into its mouth and scorched his hair. Out of the serpent’s mouth John cried to God, and the fiend disappeared.”18
Perhaps the examples of religious suffering I have cited are extreme, and in some cases not credible. Yet it is generally acknowledged that the East Slavic holy men and holy women were indeed ascetic to a greater or lesser extent. Perhaps not all of them went to such great lengths at punishing themselves as the canonized saints were alleged to have gone. On the other hand, the less illustrious holy persons may have gone even further. Speaking of the relatively uneducated monks of the sixteenth century, Bolshakoff says:
Contemplation, the Prayer of Jesus and serious meditation on the Scriptures were replaced by extreme rigorism in the observance of a multitude of rites and by an astonishing severity in bodily mortifications. Long vigils, endless services, countless prostrations, extraordinary penances and fasting were de rigueur for every good monk, who, however, understood but little of the Scriptures and the Fathers.19
The population of these sufferers in old Russia must have been substantial during some periods. For example, in 1700, before Peter the Great imposed cutbacks, there were 1,200 monasteries in Russia. The figure for 1900 is 800 monasteries (300 of them nunneries), housing 17,000 professed monks and nuns, and nearly 30,000 novices of both sexes.20 If religious suffering can be quantified (and even allowing for a decrease of asceticism over the centuries), these numbers are eloquent. They bespeak a religious masochism of massive proportions.21
Not without reason does James Billington speak of “an almost masochistic doctrine of ascetic discipline” and “the almost masochistic desire of the… monks to humble themselves.”22 Actually, the qualifier “almost” is quite unnecessary here. In similar fashion George Fedotov says: “The evaluation of suffering as a superior moral good, as almost an end in itself, is one of the most precious features of the Russian religious mind.”23 Again, the “almost” may be deleted. Suffering is masochistic in nature, it is an end in itself for the religious sufferers—which is not to deny that other ends also exist for such sufferers. In the case of monastic asceticism the most frequently mentioned end is of course spiritual perfection and union with God, and the eloquent writings of Nil Sorsky, Seraphim of Sarov, and some others testify to the mystical ecstasy which can sometimes be induced (in part) by self-denial and self-punishment.
There are signs of a revival of monasticism in Russia at the end of the twentieth century.24 But it is not yet clear to what extent this revival will involve specifically ascetic/masochistic features.
Related (psychologically) to monastic asceticism is the Russian tradition of holy foolishness. The holy fool or fool in Christ (“iurodivyi Khrista radi”) was a familiar figure in all Russian towns up until (and in some cases even after) the Bolshevik Revolution. Russians had a special fondness for the holy fools. As Slavophile philosopher Ivan Kireevsky said, “the Russian had a greater respect for the rags of the holy fool than the golden brocade of the courtier.”25
Psychoanalytically viewed, the holy fool was a sufferer, part of whose masochism was specifically provocative or exhibitionistic in style. Giles Fletcher, English ambassador to Russia in 1588—89, describes the phenomenon:
They vse to go starke naked, saue a clout about their middle, with their haire hanging long and wildely about their shoulders, and many of them with an iron coller, or chaine about their neckes, or middes, even in the very extremity of winter. These they take as Prophets, and men of great holines, giving them a liberty to speak what they list without any controulment, thogh it be of the very highest himselfe.26
Often the “liberty” was paid for, however. Onlookers would verbally abuse or physically attack holy fools, or the authorities might arrest them. Holy fools would resort to all manner of scandalous behavior in order to provoke aggression: they sat on dung heaps, refused to wash, wore little or no clothing; they would dance about, shout obscenities or make incoherent utterances, smash objects, and so on. The sadistic impulse is unmistakable in all this, but the provocative-masochistic tendency overrides it. Kovalevskii demonstrates his awareness of this when he says of Pelagiia Ivanovna, the nineteenth-century holy fool from the Diveevo convent, that “she herself would provoke [vyzyvala] everyone in the community to insult and beat her.”27 Saint Procopii of Ustiug, who lived in the thirteenth century, thanked onlookers for their retaliatory jeers and blows. Vasilii Blazhennyi of Moscow (sixteenth century) was said to willingly accept the curses of those he provoked.