PAUL BUSHKOVITCH the Clergy at the Russian Court, 1689-1796
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PAUL BUSHKOVITCH The Clergy at the Russian Court, 1689-1796 in MICHAEL SCHAICH (ed.), Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 105–128 ISBN: 978 0 19 921472 3 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 4 The Clergy at the Russian Court, 1689-1796 PAUL BusHKOVITCH When Peter the Great (1689-1725) returned home from his European tour in 1698 he had been very impressed with what he saw. He did not approve of everything, however, and was highly critical of the court of Vienna because he thought that priests, particularly theJesuit father, Friedrich Wolff von Liidingshausen, had far too much influence over Emperor Leopold I's (1658-1705) affairs. It was a 'pfäffisches Ministerium' that made peace and war as it liked, usurping the Emperor's place. 1 In the course of his own reign Peter saw to it that the clergy had as little influence as possible over politics, and his reorganization of the structure of the church in 1721 meant that the clergy, at court or elsewhere, could never again stand in the way of the tsars' policies. At the same time, the role of the clergy in Russian culture changed drastically, and the changes were most evident at the court. Before Peter and in his youth, the court's primary activity outside politics was almost daily attendance at liturgy, as well as frequent pilgrimages to nearby monasteries. After his mother's death in 1694 Peter reduced liturgical observances to once a week except in Lent, and replaced feasts of the Mother of God and the saints with celebrations of name-days and birthdays of the monarchs and their great victories.2 These changes, however fundamental, meant that religion had a much reduced role at court, but it neither disappeared nor retreated to a marginal position. Peter himself, his extended family, his favourite and principal minister, Alexander Menshikov, and many others were personally pious and took religion 1 HHSA RuBland I, Karton 18, report by lgnaz von Guarient, Moscow, 4 Mar. 1699. Peter spent a great deal of time with Father Wolff in Vienna: M. M. Bogoslovskii, Petr I: Materialy dli.a biogrefzi., 5 vols. (Moscow, 1940-8), ii. 523-4, 526. 2 Elena Pogosian, Petr 1-arkhi.tek:or rossiis/wi, istorii (St Petersburg, 2001). 106 PAUL BUSHKOVITCH seriously.3 Further, until the 1730s court entertainments were modest, consisting only of the usual banquets (often rather wild) and the great celebrations. It was Empress Anna's (1730-40) deci- sion to import Italian theatres, music, and commedia dell'arte to St Petersburg that brought to Russia a fully formed secular court culture. By the 1750s Empress Elizabeth (1741-61), though noted correctly for her piety, went to the theatre far more often than to church.4 Even in the second half of the century, however, religion had not disappeared or become a private matter, and the religion of the court required a clergy. The clergy formally appointed to the Russian court, the prid- vomoe dukhovenstvo, is virtually invisible in the literature of Russian history, primarily because of the underdevelopment of Russian church history as well as the absence of studies of the court until very recently. Further, the history we do have of eighteenth- century Russia and its monarchs is mainly political and Peter had effectively minimized the clergy's role in political life. The Russian émigré historian Igor Smolitsch's 1964 Geschichte der russischen Kirche, certainly an authoritative work, devoted several pages to the clergy at court and in the military forces, but his bibliography exclusively contains items on the latter. On the court clergy, neither Smolitsch nor the modern editors of the translation in the official church history found anything. Erik Amburger's equally fundamental handbook of Russian institu- tions is even more radical, for all he can say is that a court clergy existed.5 Nevertheless, searching the sparse literature of biogra- phy of the monarchs and other works, it is possible to identify the spiritual fathers of the monarchs and their relatives, and the court preachers. There were other clergy at the court, however, and they were probably more important than the court clergy in the narrow sense. The monks of the two local monasteries in the 3 Reinhard Wittram, Peter I.: Czar und Kaiser, 2 vols. (Gottingen, 1964), ii. 170-1; Llndsey Hughes, Russia in the Age ef Peter the Great (New Haven, 1998), 375-8. 4 Marialuisa Ferrazzi, Commedie e camici dell'arte italiani alla corte russa (1731-1738) (Rome, 2000); L. M. Starikova, Teatral' naia duzn · Rossii v epokhu Anny Ioannovny: Dokumental' naia khronika 1730-1740 (Moscow, 1995), i. On Elizabeth see e.g. Kamer-far' erski.i tseremonial''!)'i dturnal ;ea 1755 g. (St Petersburg, 1852). 5 Igor Smolitsch, Geschi.chte der russischen Kirche 1700-1917, i (Leiden, 1964); ii, ed. Gregory L. Freeze (Berlin, 1991); both vols. trans. as lstoriia russkoi tserkvi, viii, 2 pts. (Moscow, 1996---7), viii, pt. 1, 385; Erik Amburger, Geschi.chte tier Behiirdenorganisation Russ/ands von Peter dem Grossen bis 1917 (Leiden, 1966), 98. See also V. Kolachev, 'O polozhenii pridvornogo dukhovenstva v. XVIII v.', Tserkov'!)'i vestni.k, 50 (1914), 1512--16; 51 (1914), 1546-sr. Clergy at the Russian Court, 1689-1796 107 new capital and a few parish priests of churches which the monarchs attended had some role as preachers. Most important in that capacity were the bishops, who normally were better educated than the parish clergy. Court clergy who made a good impression for learning and piety often ended up as bishops. Preaching, not institutional position, was the key to importance at court. The Orthodox Church The reasons for this situation come from the institutional posi- tion and culture of the Orthodox Church in Russia in the eight- eenth century. Unfortunately church history has been a non-subject for most of the twentieth century, so much of what follows necessarily lacks an empirical foundation that is sufficient for more than a brief and tentative sketch.6 The formal structure of the Orthodox Church in Russia, as well as its role at the tsar's court, changed fundamentally in the reign of Peter the Great and on his orders. When Patriarch Adrian died in 1700, Peter did not allow the church to replace him. Rather he appointed, apparently without consulting the higher clergy or the secular ruling élite, a Ukrainian archiman- drite, Stefan lavorskii (1658-1722), to the new position of 'custo- dian (mestobliustitet) of the patriarchal throne', as well as appointing him Metropolitan of Riazan', a small eparchy to the south of Moscow. 7 This act inaugurated the practice of appoint- ing to episcopal sees almost exclusively Ukrainians, a policy that continued until 1764.8 Peter also put monastery estates under the 6 For what follows see Smolitsch, Istoriia, viii; Gregory Freeze, The Russian Leviies: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1977);James Cracraft, The Church Reform ef Peter the Great (Stanford, Cali[, 1971). 7 Peter did get advice from A. A. Kurbatov, a financial official and secret Catholic convert. Kurbatov proposed Archbishop Afanasii of Kholmogory. See Cracraft, Church Reform, 114. 8 By appointing Ukrainians Peter also raised the social status of his bishops. Russian bishops, like the monks from which they came, normally sprang from the petty nobility at best, many being sons of priests or even peasants. Ukrainian bishops normally came from the Cossack elite of the Hetmanate, the starshyna, and some, such as Stefan lavorskii, from the recognized Orthodox nobility of Poland. Even Ukrainian parish priests claimed ex officio noble status, though neither Hetmans nor tsars recognized their claim. Some priests did come from the starshyna, which considered itself a noble (szlachta, shliakhetnyi) class. 108 PAUL BUSHKOVITCH control of the state, a measure introduced by his father, Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645-76), but abandoned at his death. This latter policy of Peter's, as well as the abolition of the patri- archate, provided the principal bone of contention between church and crown for the next two generations. Peter's relations with the church in the early years of his reign were actually uncontentious, though there was certainly much grumbling. These relations began to sour in 1712 when Metropolitan Stefan delivered a sermon that criticized Peter's establishment of official inspectors of church finances and expressed thinly veiled sympathy for Peter's son, Tsarevich Aleksei, increasingly the hope of conservatives among the ruling élite and elsewhere. The complex affair of Dmitrii Tveritinov (1713-16), a barber surgeon with heretical views allegedly showing Protestant influence, only made things worse, for Stefan advocated immediate extermination of the heretics, while Peter and, it should be noted, the secular élite in the Senate wanted them to be given a chance to recant and opposed the death penalty. This incident led to a decision on the part of Peter in 1716 to reorganize the higher administration of the church, a decision spurred on by the investigation of Tsarevich Aleksei for plotting against his father in 1718.