The ritual and practice of self-immolation in the Russian Old Believers. Pulkin - self-immolation of Old Believers

Church Schism of the middle of the 17th century. became one of the most tragic events in Russian history... A contemporary, an unknown Old Believer author, described the situation as follows: "she transformed the fear of the shepherd into a wolfish nature and razviripesh on the flock of Christ's sheep and scattered me over the mountains and abysses of the earth."

Among all the many extraordinary incidents associated with the formation of the Old Believer movement, self-immolation rightfully occupy a special place. Numerous bright events caused by the church schism are to this day the subject of the closest attention of historians. At the same time, in a significant part of the scientific literature, in one way or another, affecting the problems associated with the Old Believers, the a priori idea of ​​self-immolation was reflected as a forced measure caused by merciless persecution of the supporters of "ancient piety".

It can be assumed that the authors were captured by a persistent prejudice that exists not only in everyday consciousness, but, unfortunately, also in the special literature. In accordance with it, the Old Believers are presented not as an extremely variegated, diverse, diverse social and religious movement, but as a single, monolithic, internally consistent phenomenon. This stereotype is reflected in both fiction and in the works of some modern historians.

At the same time, the idea of ​​the Old Believers as a community of believers endowed with undoubted literary talents and diligence, keeping the cultural heritage of old Russia intact, exists, is supported and carefully guarded from the encroachments of dissidents.

Maxim Viktorovich Pulkin - Self-immolation of Old Believers - mid-17th - 19th centuries

Karelian science Center... Institute of Language, Literature and History, Dmitry Pozharsky University

M.: Russian Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Science, 2013. - 334 p.

ISBN 978-5-91244-001-4

Maxim Viktorovich Pulkin - Self-immolation of Old Believers - mid-17th - 19th centuries - Content

Introduction. Historiography of the problem, characteristics of sources

• Self-immolation literature review
• Research objectives, territorial and chronological framework
• Sources for researching "fiery death"

Chapter 1. Old Believer Discussions about "Fire Death"

• Excuses for self-immolations
• Arguments against self-immolation

Chapter 2. Statistics and localization of self-immolations

• Geography of "fiery death"
• The choice of time, place, method of ritual suicide

Chapter 3. Government measures against "burns"

• Massacres of self-burners at the end of the 17th century.
• The fight against "burns" in the first half of the 18th century.
• Counteraction to self-immolations in the second half of the 18th century.

Chapter 4. "Technology" of "self-destructive death"

• The elder-leader of the "self-condemned"
• "Burnt House"
• Rites before self-immolation
• "Suicidal death": basic patterns

Chapter 5. Memory of the death of the Old Believers

• Memory of self-immolations in the Old Believer environment
• Folklore data on self-immolations
• Memory of self-immolations among opponents of the Old Believers

Conclusion

List of sources and literature

List of abbreviations

• Appendix 1. Chronology of self-immolations
• Appendix 2. Old Believer publicists about the "burnt-out"
• Appendix 3. Cases of self-immolations of Old Believers

Name index

Geographic index

Maxim Viktorovich Pulkin - Self-immolation of Old Believers - mid-17th - 19th centuries - Introduction

It is not easy to understand why, for some adherents of the Old Believer doctrine, salvation from the "world of Antichrist" in the fire seemed to be the only one possible way, while others were able to adapt to those who adopted Nikon's reforms Russian society and take a prestigious position in it: to become rich merchants, famous patrons of art and even the deputies of the first convocations of the State Duma. From-

The teachings of Old Believer works devoted to the problem of mass suicides, as well as investigative cases of "burnt-out", allows one to see a different, often unfamiliar to the modern reader, a picture of self-immolations - a thoughtful event preceded by serious, tragic reflections and intense, tireless activity of its participants.

There were long fierce theological disputes between educated and literary talented Old Believer mentors about the "fires". At the same time, not all of them unconditionally supported the sinister idea of ​​organizing mass ritual suicides.

Unfolding at the end of the 17th century, soon after Nikon's reforms, the theological dispute about the permissibility of ritual suicide decided the fate of "ancient piety." Some of the most radical adherents old faith died a voluntary death, and many others preferred life and created a great Old Believer culture. Most likely, supporters of self-immolation and other less common methods of "self-destructive death" were in the minority even among the Old Believers.

Thus, the study of self-immolations allows, firstly, to overcome the stereotypes that exist in relation to the Old Believers, and secondly, to more fully present the complex, dramatic and multicolored palette of religious life in Russia in the middle of the 17th – 19th centuries.

] [neutrality?]. The bishops at the Moscow Cathedral of 1681-1682 asked the tsar to send service people under the leadership of local bishops and governors to forcibly bring all Old Believers to courts for torture and execution. For this purpose, special armed detachments were sent, which burned houses, sketes and monasteries of the Old Believers, and all the Old Believers were to be driven into these courts. The local clergy in Russia headed the Inquisition. Soon the "Twelve Articles" of Princess Sophia was published, according to which it was ordered that all Old Believers, if they do not want to switch to new rituals, should be burnt in a log house after being interrogated three times before the execution and dispelled the ashes. Most often, interrogations were carried out on the spot. All state propaganda was structured in such a way as to present the Old Believers in an exclusively negative light, as heretics, schismatics, fanatics; for this purpose, they did not disdain either outright lies, or slander, or forgeries (see, for example, the Council Act against the heretic Armenian, against Martin's opinion). Therefore, it is impossible to separate the burning from the self-immolation of the Old Believers from the words of the executioners themselves. [ ] [neutrality?] .

Theological definitions

According to the Orthodox teaching, which was shared not only by supporters of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon, but also by their opponents, voluntary taking of one's life is one of the most serious sins. In this regard, the official Russian Orthodox Church condemned mass suicides among the Old Believers and in 1667 pronounced an anathema against disobedient and detractors, and the government began to take measures to capture the rebels and ignitors and put them to death.

At the same time, apologists for such self-destruction in the Old Believers' environment prefer not to use the terms suicide and self-destruction, and the mass deprivation of life by the Old Believers in various ways is interpreted by them as voluntary martyrdom... At the same time, preference was given to "death in fire" or, the so-called, garyam... Self-immolation was interpreted as second baptism, "Baptism of fire".

Background

Self-immolation was practiced among some religious movements in early Christianity such as the Montanists, Donatists, and Circumcillions.

The religious movements of the Donatists and Circumcillions that existed in the 4th century often resorted to self-immolation in response to the persecution of the authorities, referring to the words of the apostle Paul “ I will give up my body, and I will burn it».

History

17th century

The idea of ​​depriving oneself of life for religious reasons originated in the Old Believers in the 17th century after the church reform of Patriarch Nikon in terms of non-priesthood, which received the name of disobedience. Some of the followers of this doctrine believed that since the disappearance of the "true priesthood and sacraments" on earth, one can save one's soul only through personal exploit or personal self-denial, such as taking one's own life. The first preacher of this idea was the monk Kapiton, who denied the need for a spiritual rank and proposed seeking salvation in asceticism, in which he especially emphasized fasting. In his name, the doctrine of martyrdom was named “ capitonism". Later, this idea was developed by a native of the Yuryevets-Povolsky district, a certain Vasily Volosaty, who began to preach "fasting to death." Thus, the first method of suicide preached among the Old Believers was self-confusion... Supporters capitonism accused of "putting the living in a coffin", locking people in cells and starving people.

Suicide received a slightly different meaning among the rest of the Old Believers. The doctrine was based on the idea of ​​the coming of the kingdom of Antichrist. Martyrdom was understood as a means to keep the faith, to keep the robe of baptism from defilement, not to destroy the fruits of repentance. The requirement of a martyr's death was considered obligatory for everyone, since it was believed that no one could escape the seal of the Antichrist. Archpriest Avvakum offered martyrdom only to the elect, as "unauthorized martyrdom", justifying it solely only by sacred likenesses.

First famous case self-destruction occurred in Vyazniki, soon it spread to the Nizhny Novgorod district, the Chornoramen forests on Vetluga became especially famous. In the 1660s, in the Vologda, Kostroma, Murom and Suzdal forests, "morillers" - preachers and participants in mass suicides by starvation, became quite widespread. They " locked themselves in huts or burrows in order to avoid the temptation of saving a life, and there they kept full fast until their last gasp».

Soon, self-immolation became the most common method of suicide among Old Believers. Someone "small" Senka in 1666 reported to the governor of Nizhny Novgorod I.S.Prozorovsky that " in the Nizhny Novgorod district, the blacks, when the archers came, locked themselves in their cells, lit them and burned". In March of the same year, a certain S. A. Zubov wrote from Vologda to Moscow that the first self-immolation took place here too: “ Four people, putting hay and sklav into the hut and shutting themselves up, lit themselves from the inside and burned down; Yes, seven people, hiding from the people, left the village at night in the field and sat in the dekhtyar log house, and lit themselves, and in that log house they burned". In the 1660s, self-immolations began in Pomorie as well.

In the 1670s and 1680s, Poshekhonye became the center of self-immolation, where, possibly, not only local residents, but also Muscovites, who took the sermon of “fiery death” to heart, were burnt. According to various sources, up to 4–5 thousand people perished in the “burnt-out areas” during this period. So, in 1672 in Poshekhonsky district, in Beloselsky volost, Pyatnitsky parish, 1920 people were burnt. In the city, the preachers of self-immolation (a native of the city Polykarp Petrov, the "newly appointed" pop Poshekhonsky Semyon, the "man" Semyon the prophet, clerk Ivan Grigoriev and a certain Andrey Okun) made the whole city die "in fire" or "in water" , and only the successful intervention of their opponents prevented the implementation of this intention. Gari reached a significant distribution in the Arzamas district, where it lasted from 1675 to 1678.

Despite the fact that the polemic among the Old Believers about the permissibility of self-destruction began immediately after the appearance of this phenomenon, in the mid-70s of the 17th century it took on an especially acute character. Among the critics of suicides, the disciple of Abbot Dositheus, Elder Euphrosynus, is especially known, who in turn had many disciples and followers, who even stood out in a special "skete" or "village" named after him - Euphrosynus. In the mid-70s, on the instructions of Dositheus, he wrote a refutation to the "epistolism" of the Novgorod preacher of self-immolation Ivan Kolomensky, and in 1691 - "A Reflective Scripture about the Newly Invented Path of Suicidal Deaths."

On January 6, 1679, the first known case of self-immolation took place in Siberia, organized in the Tobolsk district on the Berezovka river by the Old Believer leader Domentian, during which, according to various sources, from 1700 to 2000 people died.

On the night of March 9-10, 1682, the first known case of self-immolation occurred in the Novgorod region - about 50 people burnt themselves in the village of Fedovo, Novo-Torzhsky district. Large self-immolations were noted in the Kargopol district, in Dorah.

However, after that, cases of self-immolation only became more frequent. The largest episodes of self-immolations took place in Karelia - Paleostrovskie burns in 1687 and 1688, in which more than 4 thousand people died and Pudozhskaya fire 1693 with one thousand victims. In 1687, in the town of Berezovo, Olonets Territory, more than a thousand people were burned to death with a certain Pimen at the head. In the same year, in the Paleostrovsky monastery, in the northern part of Lake Onega, the monk Ignatius of Solovetsky and 2,700 schismatics burnt themselves in front of the authorities who came after them. In 1693, a crowd of armed Old Believers, having smashed the church of the Pudozh churchyard, locked themselves in four fortified huts in the village of Strokina. The archers rushed to chop the huts, but the Old Believers themselves lit up in them and burned down among 800 people.

On October 24, 1687, a mass self-immolation took place in the Tyumen district, in which about 300 people died. In the same year, about 100 people were burned to death in the Verkhotursky district. In 1688, about 50 people voluntarily burnt themselves in the Tobolsk district. However, in Siberia burn soon ceased for half a century, and the next self-immolation took place only in 1751.

At the end of the 17th century, Prince Peter Petrovich Myshetsky, persecuted by the government for spreading the rumor that Tsar Peter I was the Antichrist, burned himself with 100 adherents.

XVIII century

During the reign of Peter I, there was a turning point in the spread of burns, and soon, according to DI Sapozhnikov, "a gradual but slow disappearance of this fanaticism from the historical scene should have followed."

However, since the 1740s, representatives of the Philippian consent have become the leaders of the self-incinerators, which has given new strength to the phenomenon. Their mentor, Elder Philip, with 70 followers, died in the fire of self-immolation organized by him in 1743 on the Umba River near the Vygov sketes, inspiring his followers to commit suicides by personal example. Until the end of the 18th century, according to D.I.Sapozhnikov's estimates, 32 self-immolations occurred in Tobolsk province, up to 35 in Olonets, in Arkhangelsk - 11, in Vologda - up to 10, in Novgorod - 8, in Yaroslavl - 4, in Nizhny Novgorod, Penza and Yenisei - 1, and in total - 103 self-immolations.

At the same time, the trend in this phenomenon was a gradual reduction in the number of their participants. For the 18th century, as N.N. Pokrovsky points out, “grandiose burns were not characteristic, each of which claimed thousands of lives in the 17th century”. If in the first self-immolations in the 17th century, according to the Old Believers' synodik, 8,416 people died, then in the next 15 burnt-out areas, 1,537 people died, and the last mass suicides of the late 18th-19th centuries led to the death of 149 people.

19th century

Mass suicides in the Old Believers declined, but did not stop in the 19th century. So, for example, in 1827, about 60 residents of the village of Kopen, Atkarsky uyezd, Saratov province, from among the Netovites decided to die voluntarily: 35 of them were killed. In 1860, in the village of Volosovo, Kargopol uyezd, Olonets province, 15 people, including women with young children, were burnt in the woods, in a log house.

XX century

There are two known cases of mass suicide among Old Believers who did not want to take part in the 1926 census. In addition, in 1941, the Old Believers living in the Republic of Tuva, after the German attack on the Soviet Union, committed mass suicide, as they perceived this event as the coming of the Antichrist.

In culture

see also

Notes (edit)

1. Past lectures | Let's dedicate Sunday to God! Old Believer online lectures (unknown)
2. Christian Old Believer School. About Metropolitan Ambrose and his acceptance - Priest Vadim Korovin. 06/15/2016 (unknown) (June 12, 2016). Retrieved June 16, 2016.
3. Pulkin M.V. Self-immolation of Old Believers
4. Church and ceremonial reforms of Nikon - Nikolayev Mikhail Grigorievich | Let's dedicate Sunday to God! Old Believer online lectures (unknown) ... pvdb.ru. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
5. N.M. Mikhailova. Search for splits. Part III. Sectarianism and the schism of the "Old Believers" in the 17th century. Chapter 12. Self-immolation. 1995
6. V.V.Bolotov. Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. The split of the Donatists
7. V.V.Bolotov. Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. Montanism
8. // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
9. (unknown) ... Archived May 17, 2013.
10. Barskov Ya.L. Monuments of the first years of Russian Old Believers // Chronicle of the studies of the Imperial Archaeographic Commission for 1911. SPb., 1912.S. 334.
11. NEW Istoricheskiy VESTNIK History, historical journal, history of Russia, bulletin, periodicals, periodicals, memoirs, reviews, civil war, Beloe Delo, Russian ... (unknown) ... Archived May 17, 2013.
12. Zenkovsky S.A.Russian Old Believers: Spiritual Movements of the 17th century. M., 1995.S. 272.

If we turn to the history of the Old Believers, we will see that, starting
from the 70s. XVII century, the Old Believers exterminated tens of thousands of their
adherents, including children. And the vast majority betrayed themselves
self-immolation.
In the second half of 1721 - at the beginning of 1722, the central
government agencies have sent new decrees and orders from
the demand to complete the entry of the schismatics into a double salary as soon as possible. 24 February
1722 was followed by the instruction "On the testimony of male souls", given
Major General P.G. Chernyshev and determined the order of the first revision.
One of the surprises for the Petrine legislators was the stubborn
the reluctance of Old Believers, especially in the north and east of the country, to recognize
system of recording in double capitation salary. Consent to pay double salary
was considered by many of them as submission to the forces of antichrist and help to them.
A persistent reluctance to be included in the lists of "servants of Satan" was characteristic of
for the radical directions of the Eastern Old Believers throughout
XVIII and XIX centuries
The direct conduct of the census was entrusted to the military. In Tara
a detachment led by Colonel A.I. Parfeniev was sent to the sketes. Expedition
Colonel Parfeniev in the eyes of many was a new confirmation of the end
light and led to tragic consequences: she revived in Siberia a desperate
a form of Old Believer protest of the past 17th century. - mass self-immolations.
In his reports to the government, Metropolitan Anthony emphasized that
self-immolations were a protest against the introduction of a double salary and that
Old Believers categorically refuse both to pay this salary and
join the Orthodox Church.
The first after the 80s. XVII century. outbreak of mass self-immolations in Siberia
was a vivid indicator of the tension of the situation. The victims of these
self-immolations - fugitive peasants or peasants who left their villages
directly for self-immolation. In October 1722 the Tobolsk authorities were
worried about the first news of the unrest of the Ishim, Yalutor, Tyumen
peasants. In this area in the fall of 1722 - in the spring of 1724. the following
self-immolation:
burning in the village of Zyryanskaya, Tyumen district (shortly before the middle
October 1722), burning in the village of Korkinoy on Ishim, Yalutorovskiy district;
large self-immolation on the Pyshma River, in which, according to rumors, spread
in mid-October 1722, in the Yalutorovsk villages, about 400
Tyumen and Yalutor peasants; self-immolation of peasants on December 25, 1722
in the village of Irovskaya Abatskaya Sloboda on Ishim; April 21, 1723 residents 10
yards of the village of Kamyshevskaya on the Iset, 78 people gathered in the house
retired soldier Maksim Dernov for gum-immolation, after persuasion of the authorities
7 of them left their intentions, and the rest burned down in early May; between 12
and on March 28, 1724, 145 people burned down in the swampy forests beyond the Pyshma River,
who came here from various Tyumen and Ishim villages; among them
there were several residents of the city of Tyumen.
A.S. Prugavin, pre-revolutionary historian of Old Believers and sectarianism,
in one of his articles, published in 1885 in the journal "Russian Thought",
tried to count the number of schismatics who condemned themselves to death in the fire.
Until 1772 alone, at least ten thousand people burned themselves alive. Necessary
it should be noted that this number of self-immolators should be considered minimal. Reporting on
group and family self-immolations, archival documents quite often
add to this or that figure the words "and others with them." Bonfires
self-immolators broke out after 1772. According to information collected by the same
historian, for example, in 1860 18 Old Believers burnt themselves.
The situation of Old Believers in Russia especially changed for the worse after
accession to the throne of Catherine. In 1764, the tsarist troops defeated
schismatic settlements on Vetka. In 1765 it was prescribed instead of the ransom
to take money from the schismatics recruit in kind (even those who
was in sketes). By a decree of 1767 for merchants recorded in schism,
introduced the collection of a double salary from the taxes paid by them and other fees from
trades and crafts.
In 1768, in contrast to the decree of Peter III, it was again forbidden to build
schismatic churches and chapels. Justifying this decision, Vladyka Orthodox
churches from the Synod wrote: "It is true that in Russian Empire heterodox
Christian religions, churches, public, and Mohammedans, their prayers
it is allowed to have; to schismatics is not an example, for from those our Orthodox
no damage occurs ", - a different matter from popular among the people
schismatics.
At the same time, the path was taken to unanimity: the subordination of the independent
the state of the Old Believers of the official church.
By a decree of 1764, those schismatics, "who
the Orthodox Church does not shy away from the sacraments of the Church from the Orthodox
they accept priests, "but they can be baptized with two fingers.
The hierarchs of the official church called the schism "hydra". Assimilating
Hercules, the executioners in uniforms not only chopped, but burned the Protestants on
bonfires and log cabins. At the same time, protest among the schismatics grew. V
In response to the defeat of Vetka in 1764, the log houses of the self-immolators were set ablaze.
In the Olonets district, a group of schismatic peasants together with some
the newcomers locked herself in the hut. The headman and the ten's men approached the house,
ask about unknown people. Instead of answering, one of them went out into the street with
with an ax in his hands, hit the ten's man and cut off his arm. The amazed crowd is not
stirred. The stranger calmly returned to the hut and slammed the door. V
the windows burst into flames. 15 people of the schismatics died this time in the fire.
In the Novgorod province, the peasants of the village of Lyubach were brought to
despair. 35 people gathered at the peasant Ermolin and announced that
will be burned. Their intention was reported to the authorities. Lieutenant Kopylov arrived in the village
with a team of soldiers, a bishop and a priest. They announced to the self-immolators that if they
will receive a double salary, they will be released to their homes without any punishment for
gathering. The schismatics answered:
- Your faith is wrong, but ours is true, Christian; cross
four-pointed - adorable (in the sense of "seducing" - author), we respect
octagonal; yes, and in the divine scripture you have many wrongs, and if
they will ruin us, then we will not give up and will do what the Lord commands. A
if they do not ruin us, we do not want to burn. Let there be a letter for us
at the hand of the empress, so that we remain as before, and not be in a double salary,
and we will not be forced into church.
Soon, another 26 people joined those who had taken up residence in the hut. The end has come
August. The vegetables are ripe in the garden. The schismatics asked Kopylov to allow them
go for cabbage. They were allowed to do this. About 20 men and women came out of the hut
with guns, axes, clubs. They filled bags full of vegetables and again
closed in a hut.
The Senate reported all this to the Empress. They suggested that if
schismatics will continue to persist, then take them by force and send them to
Nerchinsk. But Catherine decided differently: she ordered to choose among
schismatics are smarter and send them to negotiations. After much persuasion and
convictions, the Lubach schismatics went home and enrolled in a double
salary.
The self-immolation fire was blessed by the highest schism authorities, in
first of all, Archpriest Avvakum. In one of his works written
already in the years of imprisonment, the praise of the first self-incinerators is contained: "The essence
having comprehended the flattery of apostasy, let not evil perish in their spirit, gathering in
courtyards with wives and children and burned with fire by my will. Blessed is this delight
lord. "
Most often, the schismatics did not live compactly, but were dispersed among
other population. As part of general municipal associations, they at the same time
formed their own religious communities, united not only by the unity of faith,
but also a commonality of purely everyday interests.
The prototype of the self-contained schismatic associations were
ancient Christian communities. Based on their traditions, the schismatics revered
only ourselves as true Christians, surrounded by a world of pagans.
The support bases for the formation of religious communities of schismatics were
monasteries and chapels. For example, in early XIX centuries in the Tver province, in
the terrain of Teterka, lost in the forest, there was a skete of Fedoseevsky
consent. It was soon destroyed by the authorities.
Raskolnikov, persecuted by the government and the church, defamed in every possible way,
spread all sorts of fables about them, obliged to sew a yellow trump card
on outerwear. As a result, they turned into renegades, on some of
people viewed them as something terrible, and the yellow trump card betrayed a schismatic
to ridicule any yard boy. In this environment, persecuted
the schismatic "holding his nose and ears, hurriedly ran past the Orthodox Church,
so as not to smell the incense coming out of it, and not to hear it
bell ringing ".
This is how the character of the schismatics was formed over a number of generations:
secretive, proud, but at the same time moral and honest.
All convinced Old Believers were very fanatical. Especially women. At
persecution, during interrogations they usually answered everything briefly:
- Do with me what you want.
- Lead to execution.
"Many would willingly subject themselves to torture," notes one of the
pursuers of the split.
In the 19th century, the split became more and more deadlocked. Earthly life
it seemed to the schismatics that it did not promise anything positive for them anymore. Stayed
the last hope for the kingdom of heaven. In these conditions, savage
tendencies of religious sanctification of suicide. A schismatic sect emerges
"sailors", from which, in turn, the rumors were formed
"self-burners" and "uniting with Christ" - suicides or begging
co-religionists to take their lives.
Similar tendencies were formed especially among the Net and
Phillippians. They argued that if someone fills himself with fasting, or himself
burns, it will become the same saint and great martyr, like the saints.
So, about 1830 in the village of Kopeny, Atkarsky district, Saratov province
several dozen people, adults with children, chose by lot from their
the environment of one destroyer, and they were all killed by him.
Another group of people, gathered in a separate building, surrounded it
with straw, brushwood and set it on fire.
Many were burned, but most of the self-immolators were pulled out of the fire
arrived in time by the police.
In the Kalyazinsky district of the Tver province, two young Filipovtsy, 30 and 18
years, decided to accept a martyr's death. The elder wrote a will,
which reflects their mood before death - a detachment from everything earthly in
waiting for the kingdom of heaven:
Goodbye, our beloved fathers
Spill, Only trust in God ... And we go to the glory of God.
At night, the young people went to the forest, made a fire. Standing in front of
flames, frenziedly sang prayers. The elder wanted to throw himself into the fire first,
but the younger asked to give him this right, feeling a lack of strength
endure the sight of a friend's torment. Singing a hymn to God, the young man entered
into the flames. At the sight of his friend's torment, the elder could not stand it. Full
compassion, he threw himself into the fire, pulled out a half-burnt friend, waited,
while he regained consciousness, began to convince him to save his life, and when
the younger comrade again fell into oblivion, he himself entered the flame. Exhausted youth
witnessed the superhuman willpower of an older friend. They found him in the morning.
The young man was still alive, told about everything, but soon died of burns.
In the Vladimir province, the peasant Nikita burned down his house and two people in it
their own children, previously slaughtered by him on the mountain outside the village. On
interrogation, he showed that he did so under the influence of the Bible and committed
infanticide in the likeness of Abraham, who sacrificed his son to God
Isaac. Nikita was exiled to Transbaikalia. He settled in Srednyaya Borz on the Argun.
While living here, he often went into the forest, where there was a small chapel. It takes a long time
did not return. Once the shepherds entered the chapel and found in it
the following: a large wooden cross was dug into the ground under a canopy. His
Nikita himself cut down and dug in. And a crucified man hung on the cross: his head in
a crown of thorns inclined to one side. In the bitter frost he hung naked, only
belted the lower abdomen with a white scarf. There was a wound in the side, the whole body was splattered
blood. At the foot of the cross lay a spear and instruments of the passion of God. When
people took him down from the cross, he was still alive. Nikita was cured and called to
interrogation. He replied that he sacrificed himself for the sins of men and chose for this
Good Friday evening.
He crucified himself. First, I nailed my legs to the cross with my right hand,
holding onto the left side of the cross bar, then left hand planted on
a large nail, driven in beforehand so that the point sticks out. I wanted to do the same
and with his right hand, but his strength left him - weakened, hung. So, with omitted
hand, and the shepherds found him. "I wanted to die, as Christ died for
people ", - said Nikita.
The righteous bonfire was far from the only way for the Old Believer to
the Kingdom of heaven. There was hunger, a pool, an ax, and a knife.
In 1896, the first general population census of the empire took place. On
A schismatic nun lived in the Tiraspol farms of the Kherson province
Vitaly, who had a great influence on the Old Believers. In an organized
census, she saw the approach of the end of the world, the doomsday. She
taught that it is better to die than to be entered on the questionnaire.
According to the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod Pobedonostsev, some sectarians
believed the nun and reacted negatively to this census, seeing in it
violence against their faith and considering it a means of putting them on the sealed lists
antichrist. Various means were used to avoid this census
up to the intention to subject themselves to self-immolation.
It was on this basis of religious intolerance that a terrible incident occurred.
burial of schismatics alive with their consent. Influenced by sermons
nuns Vitalia, the inhabitants of the farmsteads decided to accept a martyr's death, but
stay true to your religion. December 23, 1896 nine sectarians
they prepared a pit for themselves and sang a burial service over themselves. When they lay down in
pit, Old Believer Fyodor Kovalev, as a bricklayer, at their request, laid the pit
brick.
F. Kovalev was the murderer of 25 people, including two of his minors
children, wife and 60-year-old mother. All those buried alive and Kovalev himself were
convinced that this death will lead them to the "kingdom of heaven."
Four days after this incident, six more were walled up alive.
human.
On the day of the census, Vitaly, along with some other co-religionists
refused to give information to the scribes. She and five other cultists were
imprisoned, but were released after a 5-day hunger strike.
In February 1897, Fyodor Kovalev buried alive in two more steps.
ten people, including Vitaly.
The disclosure of this terrible case led to the arrest of Kovalev and imprisonment
him to jail. Later, the Synod went further and sent him to the prison
branch at the Spaso-Evfimeevsky Monastery in Suzdal.
Fyodor Kovalev was imprisoned in the prison department on February 22, 1898.
and placed in a separate cell under the strict supervision of the monastery authorities. V
he spent seven years in a monastery prison, and then was transferred to a cell
monastery. In his letter to his sister, Kovalev announced his reconciliation with
life of a prisoner: he lived in this "box" for seven years, but even if he lives
here until 70 years old, will not ask for his release.

E. V. Romanova. Mass self-immolation of Old Believers in Russia in the 17th-19th centuries. // Studia ethnologica series. Saint Petersburg: Publishing House of the European University in Saint Petersburg, 2012.288 p.

A monograph by Ekaterina Romanova, an employee of the Museum of the History of the City of Kiev, is devoted to an interesting and important topic of mass self-immolations of Old Believers (burning) in the 17th-19th centuries. The choice of the topic turned out to be very bold, for it was repeatedly raised by both old researchers and modern ones, but every time it was "not given" - and the results turned out to be not entirely convincing. The matter was hampered by both the difficulty of the question itself and the real picket fence of ideological and cultural prejudices, some of which turned into cliches. The latter circumstance is explained to some extent by the fact that the historiography of all events associated with the schism of the 17th-18th centuries was in the hands of synodal missionaries and scholars, one way or another affiliated with church structures. Even freed from the obligation to demonstrate loyalty to the clerical point of view, science was not immediately able to soberly assess such a complex plot as the mass self-immolations. The fact is that, in general, mass suicide is easy to regard as a magical action, as an unreflected ritual. Ekaterina Romanova refused such a technique - and she did the right thing. The author examines this phenomenon in various scientific perspectives: psychological, sociological and religious studies ... And only one of them, not without reason, is pushed aside by the researcher a little aside - the religious and political one. The fact is that in Russian social culture the religious and the political are essentially not differentiated, which makes the task extremely difficult when describing the dramatic moments of the confrontation between the authorities and the church. The theme of "fiery death", its involuntary voluntariness and its perception is built by the author, firstly, as social history and the emancipation of the church in the person of the Old Believers from the state machine, which swallowed up the reformed part of the church. Secondly, it is viewed as a conflictological case and, finally, as the theme of the rituals of death and resistance to the Antichrist in the context of the collective identity of the Russian person. The bibliography of the question of fiery deaths has been studied and presented quite convincingly and exhaustively. It is through the review of the bibliography that Romanov designates all the main levels of analysis. From the first missionary studies aimed at "exposing the schism" (such as Dmitry Rostovsky, Ivan Nilsky, etc.), through populist and sociological (Afanasy Shchapov, Alexander Pypin), Romanov's research approaches the main tendencies modern science , more or less free from political influence, including Western (Georg Bernard Michels). The subject of the study itself is very difficult to understand due to the fact that modern man, as a rule, judges history on the basis of a humanistic attitude, while in the described time the value of human life was significantly less than the value of beliefs and their inviolability. In addition, when discussing the essay of Archpriest Avvakum about the life of Abraham, the researcher quite rightly notes that suicide in early Christian culture (and in Christian in general, given the different waves of re-actualization of the heritage) does not have an unequivocally negative connotation. Rather, on the contrary - in the early Christian lives on which the Russian people were brought up in the 17th-18th centuries, the theme of suffering “I will not assure you, but for faithfulness,” voluntary or semi-voluntary torture had a completely positive meaning. And in the Russian cult of Boris and Gleb, revered in the rank of passion-bearers, it was again actualized as a request for death addressed to the executioners. The author rightly draws attention to one feature of the collective Russian identity: passionarity and charisma in it are inextricably linked with asceticism, and the more radical the latter, the stronger the connection. Death for the faith fits into the ascetic monastic paradigm. Finally, the author appropriately recalls and takes into account the considerations of the researcher of the Old Believers E. M. Yukhimenko, who showed that in a statistically significant number of cases of burns, the Old Believers provided for the possibility of bloodless development and gave the sent soldiers or police the opportunity to leave peacefully. If the assault began, then a specially set candle, overturning, set fire to the straw - and the burning began. In discussions about Old Believer self-immolations, three main points of view have emerged. The first (dogmatizing) repeats the fantastic (that is, unfounded and artificial) assumption of the missionaries that self-immolation was justified ritually, that is, it was essentially a kind of practice, independent in relation to the Christian. The second theory was expressed mainly by historians of the populist trend and taken up by Soviet historiography. It boils down to the topic of social protest of the oppressed masses. And, finally, the third position, which is close to the author, is connected with the sociopsychological interpretation, the way to which was opened by Emile Durkheim with his work "Suicide", and then developed in their works by Pierre Bourdieu, Irina Paperno and Alexander Agadzhanyan. Suicide is viewed in these studies as a cultural institution, formalized by various practices. Thus, Ekaterina Romanova sees her task in the study of mass Old Believer self-immolations as a complex of religious practices. This gives her the opportunity to combine the study of self-immolations themselves with polemics around them, journalism and the writings of the self-immolators themselves. A separate section of the book is devoted to historical sources, it includes decrees, interrogations and physical evidence. Polemic works are classified in a separate bibliographic chapter, which is quite true, for the discussion is also going on around the sources. Particularly interesting is the analysis of the "Habakkuk testimonies". The fact is that the missionary pseudo-humanistic rhetoric (“Look what these fanatics have reached!”) Was based largely on pseudo-Habakkuk forgeries (“The Eternal Gospel” and a number of others), which arose in a special movement on the Kerzhenets river, the so-called onufrievschina. When analyzing this group of texts, the author rightly shifts the emphasis from accusing the archpriest of calls for self-immolation to an analysis of the suffering-confessional worldview of which he was a representative. The book deals with the topic of "teaching" in remarkable detail, in other words, the possible dogmatization of fiery death. In the conditions of the kingdom of impiety ("Antichrist") and general apostasy, the possibility, even theoretical, of renouncing the faith in the face of suffering (in the event of arrest and imprisonment) was much more terrible than death. The fact is that the tasks of the military detachments included biased interrogation, exhortation and "return to the bosom of the church" of entire "schismatic" villages. At the same time, spiritual verses, in which the theme of death for Christ was associated with rituals and with abiding in God, were of much greater importance than direct sermons and calls to death in fire. In addition, the topic of visionary work and the vision of paradise was important, which served as an additional justification in the conditions of popular religiosity beyond the control of the official church censors. In fact, the latent idea of ​​a nationwide stand for faith between life and death, in which the boundaries of individual existence are erased, was most clearly expressed in visionary work. In various situations surrounding the very facts of self-immolation, explicit and implicit conflicts between Old Believers and the state found expression, either denoted by the opposition “avoidance of contact vs. wanted ”,“ provocation vs. self-answer ", or expressed in logic social organization ... So the self-immolators, who refused to participate in censuses and pay taxes, find themselves involved in the struggle of local authorities for control over the territories and their population. An implicit conflict Romanova calls "quiet" self-immolations, which became the main form in the 19th century. Such self-immolations do not contain direct protest, and the conflict does not occur between the persecutors-Nikonians and the persecuted-Old Believers, but between Christ and the Antichrist in a personal eschatological experience. There is some doubt about the assessment of the famous deacon Alexander Kerzhensky as a self-defendant based on his letter to Peter I. Such a letter nevertheless pursued the goal of conveying the point of view to the tsar, whom many Old Believers (for example, the Vygoretsk writers) considered the main judge of the dispute between the people and the state. Due to the communitarian nature of the “fiery death”, a special topic is the role of mentors in popov-free communities, who are often considered responsible for the formation of the tendency of the Old Believers to self-immolate among the peasants of the Old Believers. But mentors, as Romanova rightly notes, are only a way to replace the lack of hierarchy (in the pop-free communities, priests of "Nikon's position" were not accepted). The facts before the Old Believer self-immolations testify that the idea of ​​fiery death for Christ is not necessarily connected either with schism or with the institution of mentoring. The meaning of life for the sake of death, which crystallized in Orthodox Christianity, has generated this phenomenon for centuries as a by-product. The monastic way of life of many communities and the actual obligation of rigid asceticism were reflected in the way of life of the Old Believers precisely because they were implicitly inherent in Orthodox Christianity in Russia. The very work in the monastery was a special kind of preparation for death. The researcher sees the central place of the rite in the Orthodox culture of the Russian people and the expression of the faith of the Russian people primarily through the rite in a special type of "order" (strict orderliness) of self-immolations, for example, in the Paleostrovskaya fire or in the self-immolation described in the RSIA manuscript: they gathered in the upper room and prayed to God until the dawn of the day, and at dawn, he came to them and came to the yzba of the vyshepomya-nutago of the Kamensk village, Pokrovskoe identity, a resident of the plowed peasant Danilo Semyonov, son of Sanin, whom he was a mentor and false teacher for burning. And he gathered all the women in the yzbu: girls and women. It is not known by what book he confessed them, asked sins like a priest, but by confession this sex of the woman sent everyone to the upper room, called the peasants and suddenly asked everyone about the sins of this book. And at the end of that confession, he told them that they should not just go out and burn, but that he himself should not know where to leave, after which they all gathered in the upper room, declaring their sins to each other, said goodbye, bowed at their feet, and Mamaev prepared straw and I lit the brooms with a torch, which is why the courtyard caught fire. And one-de prayed to God up to a large flame, and as the flame was kindled, then all the dwellers, bowing to the ground, lay on the floor. " In the analysis of the connection between the funeral ritual and the idea of ​​a cleansing fire Doomsday Romanova displays an almost virtuoso mastery of the structuralist method. “As you can see,” the researcher writes, “the preparation of the Old Believers for death took place in accordance with the Christian tradition, and in particular with the ideas about the ideal of martyrdom, since this death was accepted voluntarily ... simultaneously performed in several ritual roles ”. As examples of the new attitude of the peasants to "rank" during self-immolation, interesting are the cases of self-immolations in the 19th century, which, as Romanova shows, had a completely different character compared to the burnt-out areas of the 17th-16th centuries. There, the connection with the context has been lost, new practices and new eschatological and mystical justifications for one's own actions appear, which lead the topic of self-immolation into the realm of inner, not directly expressed experience. But the most important thing is that it directly follows from this that the logic of self-immolation in these historical conditions actually reproduces the authentic logic of self-denial, implicit for Orthodox Christianity to its logical end. However, this approach shifts the emphasis from the church conflict to the area of ​​reasoning about culture and, more broadly, about the fate of Russia. The conflict between the Old Believer Church and the Nikonian Church was inevitable and the conflict between people and the authorities, during which the Old Believers used, as Romanova explains, not the language of non-resistance and humility, but the language of an apocalyptic dispute about faith. And here lies the main argument against the interpretation of self-immolations as magic: Romanova shows the rational design of the phenomenon itself. The "pursuit of faith" with exhortations proceeded from the presumption that the struggle of arguments is not devoid of meaning, although the opponents are servants of the Antichrist, and their task is to draw their opponents into their schismatic false church. But such disputes before self-immolations were often the design of the burning itself. The main cultural mechanism works here, not disintegrating, but integrating society - dialogue. This, together with everything else, gives the author the full right to assert that "burns became not only a behavioral strategy, an act of life, but were also included in the Old Believer and, more broadly, Russian culture." All four chronological types of "burns"

A very good article that shows that in the then state practice there was the burning of heretics. This suggests that the so-called "mass self-immolation of Old Believers" is a concealment of their punitive state expeditions against the Old Believers.
Russian Orthodox Church and burnings

E. O. Shatsky
From school course history we all remember the medieval Inquisition, about the bonfires on which heretics, gentiles, witches perished in Europe. The Inquisition itself did not execute anyone, but transferred religious criminals to secular authorities with the ominous wording: "For punishment without shedding blood," that is, for burning or hanging. The relationship between the ecclesiastical and secular authorities corresponded to the relationship between the customer and the contractor.

But from school textbooks one gets the impression that the Inquisition was only in Catholic countries... Meanwhile, the ancient provision of ecclesiastical law, stating that the secular government should help the church to punish religious criminals, is the same for Catholicism and Orthodoxy. For the first time, the decision on the death penalty for the storage of heretical literature was made by the I Ecumenical Council (325), the decision was supported by the Emperor Constantine. In Byzantium, after the division of the churches, in 1119 the head of the Bogomil heresy, Vasily, was burned. Have there been burnings of religious criminals in Russia? Yes, absolutely. Were they due to the influence of Christianity? Also, yes.

The first mention of the burning we find in the chronicle record for 1227. In Novgorod, four wise men are tied up and thrown into the fire. Were the executioners Christian? The chronicle leaves no doubt about the answer to this question - the Novgorodians who arrested the Magi first of all brought them to the archbishop's yard. It is obvious that we have before us devoted adherents of Orthodoxy.

Around the same time, in Smolensk, the clergy demanded the execution of the monk Abraham, accusing him of heresy and reading forbidden books - the proposed types of execution - "nail to the wall and set on fire" and drown. The Life of Abraham unambiguously names those who demanded his execution: “the priests, abbots, and priests, if they could, would eat him alive,” “outrageously the priests, and also the abbots roared at him like oxen; the princes and boyars did not find any fault in him, having checked everything and made sure that there was no untruth, but everyone was lying to him. " Attention is drawn to the compliance of the Christian prohibitions on the shedding of blood with methods of execution: burning and drowning.

Further, in 1284, a gloomy law appears in the Russian "Pilot Book" (a collection of church and secular laws): "If someone keeps a heretical scripture with him and believes it, he will be cursed with all the heretics, and those books are on his head. burn it. In the XIV century. there also appears the apocryphal “Rule 165 of St. father of the Fifth Council: against those who offend the holy churches of God ”, punishing by burning at the stake for looting church property. The chronicle for 1438 mentions the "Holy rules of the holy apostles", prescribing "to burn the living or to sleep in the earth with fire" for heresy (another version: "The holy rules of the divine law of the holy apostles command such a church debaucher to burn with fire or to rake the living into the earth") ... According to the Gustynskaya Chronicle (17th century), in 1438, Metropolitan Isidore, who accepted the Catholic Union, "was condemned to be burned to death from the sacred cathedral, but fled from prison." Obviously, the author of the 17th century. I did not see anything unusual in such a judgment of the Council. According to the Resurrection and Second Sophia Chronicles, the prince did not send a pursuit for the fugitive, precisely because he did not want to burn him. It is also clear that the appearance in Russia of the above laws is associated with Christian church... Methods, again, without shedding blood: burning and burying in the ground.

It is doubtful that Isidore was the only one to whom they decided to apply these laws. Perhaps the following executions of witches are connected with them: in 1411 twelve witches were burned by the inhabitants of Pskov on suspicion that they had sent a plague to the city, and in 1444 the Mozhaisk prince ordered to burn the noblewoman Marya Mamonova “for magic”. I. Berdnikov mentions the Mozhaisky principality as an example of the influence of the church on secular justice - Prince Andrei Dmitrievich Mozhaisky corresponded with Abbot Kirill Beloozersky, who wrote him a letter with advice on punishing criminals. The son of this prince - Ivan Andreevich - and burned the witch. It is reasonable to believe that Ivan Andreevich received the most Orthodox education, including in the field of law. Of course, according to the laws of that time, "witchcraft" was considered a crime subject to the ecclesiastical court. This also confirms that the Mozhaisk prince acted in alliance with the church authorities.

In 1490, Archbishop Gennady of Novgorod ordered to burn birch bark helmets on the heads of several condemned heretics (apparently, remembering the law on burning heretical books on the head of a heretic). Two of the punished went mad and died. Archbishop Gennady is canonized by the church.

In 1504, a famous church council was held, which sentenced an unknown number of "Judaizing" heretics to be burned. The chronicler lists eight people by name, but adds “many other heretics who burned them”. One of the initiators of the burning was Hegumen Joseph Volotsky - also canonized by the church. The burnings were also supported by the heir to the Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich, who took the throne a year later. The lack of information about burnings in Russia during his reign may be due to an insufficient number of sources.

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, a certain Russian heretic who fled to Lithuania and was nicknamed "the second Luther" there, said that in Moscow he was supposed to be burned, but the tsar canceled the death sentence. D. ist. n. RG Skrynnikov connects this message with the church council of 1553 - 54, at which a group of heretics headed by Abbot Artemy was condemned. About Artemia, the Cathedral charter stated: "The Tsar and Grand Duke Artemy gave the execution," that is, the pardon was a personal decision of the Tsar.

A list of the executed times of Ivan the Terrible is preserved in his "Synodik", compiled by clerks for archival affairs. But the "Synodik" does not mention how and for what the persons mentioned in it were executed. Comparisons with other sources allow us to clarify that the carpenters Neupoka, Danila and Mikhail were burned in the spring and summer of 1569 for eating veal prohibited by church rules, and in August 1575 15 witches were burned in Novgorod (“and the witches say”). Foreigner Petrei in the notes of the beginning of the 17th century. wrote about Grozny:

No matter how cruel and violent he was, he did not persecute or hate anyone for their faith, except for the Jews, who did not want to be baptized and confess Christ: he either burned them alive, or hung them up and threw them into the water.

The drowning of the Jews is known from the chronicles, but the news of Petreus about their burnings is unique. There is no evidence of the church's involvement in the burnings of the times of Grozny, but let's not forget the basic principle of the Inquisition - the execution is carried out by the secular authorities.

In addition to the burning of witches:

The tale of sorcery, written for Ivan the Terrible, proves the need for severe punishments for sorcerers, and as an example it sets out the tsar who, together with the bishop (emphasis added by Afanasyev - E. Sh.) “Write books ordered and affirm, and sorcery is cursed, and in the fun of the commandment burn them with fire. "

In 1584 the extremely pious sovereign Fyodor Ioannovich ascended the throne. In 1586 the Russian church was headed by a certain Job (canonized), who in one of his works approved the execution of pagan priests. As far as can be judged from the sources that have come down, in the time of Job, burning became a common execution. The English envoy Fletcher, who lived in Moscow from 11/25/1588 to 05/06/1589, describes one of the burnings of heretics as an eyewitness:

... husband and wife ... were burned to death in Moscow, in a small house, which they set on fire on purpose. Their guilt remained a secret, but it is likely that they were punished for some kind of religious truth, although the priests and monks assured the people that these people were evil and damned heretics.

The reliability of Fletcher's message is confirmed by the description of the method of execution - burning in a log house, often mentioned in Russian documents of the 17th century, but unusual for other countries. If in six months only in Moscow, Fletcher managed to witness the burning of two people, then there is reason to believe that there were much more such burnings. Chronicle under 7099 (1590/91) describes the burning of sorcerers in Astrakhan by order of Fyodor Ioannovich: "after torturing them, the emperor ordered to burn them." Coupled with the message of Patriarch Job:

About the great sovereign, the crowned tsar and the great prince Fyodor Ivanovich of All Russia! Truly, you are equal to the appearance of the Orthodox Tsar Constantine, the first in piety, who shone forth in piety, and his grand prince Vladimir, who enlightened the Russian land with holy baptism: they are, every one of them, in their time, the idols are better and the piety is perceiving; But you are now a great autocrat and a true seeker of piety, crushing not only idols, but destroying those who serve them to the end,

this gives us reason to believe that in the time of Fyodor Ioannovich, executions for spiritual crimes were no exception.

The same trend continued under Boris Godunov, when Job remained the head of the church. In January 1605, a letter from the Moscow government about the appearance of False Dmitry in the northern cities reported:

People who were sentenced to be burned to death in the state for their disgusting deeds, and others to exile, fled to the Lithuanian land abroad and sowed heretical evil tares.

That is, there were not so few people sentenced to be burned for heresy. Under the same 1605, chronicles report the execution of the apostate Smirny. According to the "Piskarevsky Chronicler" (written in 1621 - 1625):

... the head of Streletskaya Smirnaya Mamatov from Georgia ran to Kizylbashi and got into trouble there, understood his wife. And the tsar ordered him to be executed with various torments: "You de abandoned the Christian faith, but you got stuck!" ...

The New Chronicler (compiled by the patriarch's entourage in the 20s of the 17th century) specifies the method of execution:

... Busurman Smirny learned that he was ubusurmanized, ordered him to give him different torments, and finally ordered him to douse the accursed one with oil and ordered to light it. Here the accursed one died.

Obviously, the approval of the execution in the circle of Patriarch Filaret - "accursed".

That under Filaret - the de facto head of the Russian state - burning was recognized as an ordinary execution for religious crimes - is evidenced by Mikhail Fedorovich's letter to the Archbishop of Tobolsk (February 5, 1623). Burning is spoken of as a punishment for "great spiritual deeds." The tsar responded to the archbishop with the following complaints (I cite in context):

... the thieves of the archpriest of Sofia before the boyar and governors and before the clerk dishonored. And the boyar de and the governors did not do anything to them for that. And after that, in the same week, before you, our pilgrim (Archbishop - E. Sh.), And before the boyar and the governor, many people declared themselves in great spiritual deeds. And the boyar and the governor, having advised you, our pilgrim, inflicted a slight punishment on them and sent them to many cities, but they did not punish them until the end and did not burn them with fire.

The tsar refused to make a decision until the archbishop wrote to him “what kind of people, and for what guilt the punishment had been brought to the end, and burn them with fire, and what their great guilt”. It is clear from the letter that the abbot was dissatisfied with the too merciful verdict of the governor, who did not inflict punishment "to the end." The tsar did not object, but wanted to know the specific spiritual crimes of the condemned (unfortunately, no further correspondence on the case could be found).

From 1647, a decree of Alexei Mikhailovich in the name of the Shatsk governor Grigory Khitrovo reached us:

And you for the wife Agafyitsa and the peasant Tereshka, having given a spiritual father, ordered them to partake of the holy mysteries of God, it will be worthy, and after the communion of the holy mysteries of God, ordered them to be taken out to the square and telling them their guilt and the loathsome deed, ordered them on the square in a pipe, covered with straw, burn.

Agafya and her teacher in witchcraft, Tereshka Ivlev, were accused of killing several peasants to death with the help of spells and the "thread of a dead man with a sentence". The text of the decree is the most pious.

In 1649 the Zemsky Sobor in Moscow adopted the legislative act "Cathedral Code". The very first article of the Code read:

There will be some gentiles, no matter what faith, or a Russian person, will blaspheme the Lord God and our salvation, Jesus Christ, or the birth of his most pure mistress, our Mother of God and the ever-virgin Mary, or on an honest cross, or on his saints, and about then look for all sorts of investigations firmly. Let it be heard about that, and after exposing that blasphemer, execute, burn.

The 24th article of the 22nd chapter of the Code is also interesting:

And will someone be a busurman by some means of violence or deceit of a Russian person to his Busurman faith, and will cut off, and according to his Busurman faith, he will cut it off, and it turns out that the busurman will be executed on the search, burned with fire without any mercy. And whoever he will put a Russian person into, and that Russian person should be sent to the patriarch, or to another authority, and tell him to issue a decree according to the rules of the holy apostles and holy fathers.

Legislators are not very consistent. If an Islamic missionary succeeded "by some means" to convert a Russian to his faith, then it means that it was either violence or deception. However, a Russian who has been drugged by "violence" is also not left unpunished.

The Code was drawn up according to the rules of the apostles and the holy fathers, the laws of the Greek tsars (ie, the "Leader of the Book"), the decrees of the Russian tsars and the judgments of the boyars, that is, in accordance with tradition. The Code was signed by all the participants in the Council, including the Consecrated Council - the highest clergy. Among the signatories was Archimandrite Nikon, who became patriarch four years later. The then head of the Russian Church, Patriarch Joseph, wrote a letter to the Tsar in the same year, in which he referred to the first article of the Code:

In the booked book it is written: whoever utters what blasphemous words against the catholic and apostolic Church - let him die by death. And he, Stephen (Protopope of Annunciation - E. Sh.), Did not blaspheme against the cathedral and apostolic Church to all God's churches - and he dishonored us, your pilgrims. Dear ... Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich! kings to give him, Stephen, a council [that is, a council court]. Tsar sovereign, have mercy! ...

The Emperor, however, did not give up Archpriest Stephen for reprisal.

So, the burning under the Code of 1649 was approved by the Orthodox Church, thereby taking on part of the responsibility for the subsequent executions under this Code.

In the future, sources directly say that the relationship between church and state developed according to the scheme: customer - performer.

Clerk G.K. Kotoshikhin, who lived in the 17th century and is known for his essay "On Russia in the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich", tells about the system of terror that existed in his time (served in 1658-1664) in relation to church opponents:

... and whom they have (in the courts of the patriarch and church authorities - E. Sh.) For spiritual deeds ... they will condemn to death, who deserved what kind of execution, and they, having written out their verdict from the case, are sent with those convicted people to the royal court, and according to their verdict from the royal court ordered to execute without detention, who is worthy of what.

In the robbery order “they burn the living for blasphemy ... for sorcery, for the black book, for the book transposition, who will teach again to interpret as thieves against the apostles, prophets and St. father with cursing. " “The death penalty for the female sex is: for blasphemy ... the living are burned; for charm ... heads are cut off. "

The torture of the accused was also carried out at the request of the spiritual authorities: "When it was necessary to torture someone, the spiritual authorities sent the accused to the secular authorities."

Another specific decree, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov wrote to the Archbishop of Tobolsk:

And which people in spiritual matters will reach what kind of punishment, and you would have ordered them to be humbled according to the rule of the holy fathers, so that they could be subdued from any lawlessness ahead. And there will be people in spiritual matters who learn not to be obedient, but will come to great punishment, and you would send them to our boyar and the governors.

Austrian diplomat von Meyerberg (he was in Russia in 1661 - 63) reports on the rights of the patriarchs:

... they judge all matters pertaining to the clergy, church obedience and Christian morals, and they never receive a refusal from the tsar to approve these sentences.

Foreigners who visited Moscow during this period talk about the burnings of heretics as eyewitnesses:

Heresy is punished by fire. The heretic goes to the roof of a small house and from there jumps into the interior; straw with splinters is thrown on him; the flames will soon smother him. This punishment is rather and too severe.

Those who arouse any doubts about the faith are imprisoned in small wooden houses and burned alive and looking out.

Let's go back to the witch hunt. At the beginning of 1653, the governors of Tula, Karpov, Mikhailov, Mosalsk, on Oskol, and others received decrees that people “from now on will not hold on to any godless deeds and those renounced and heretical books, and letters, and conspiracies, and fortune-telling books , and they burned roots and poisons, and did not go to witches and sorcerers, and did not hold on to any witchcraft, and did not bewitched with bones or anything else, and did not spoil people. " Regarding those who “will not leave behind such evil and disgusting deeds, such evil people and enemies of God were ordered to be burned in log cabins without any mercy and their houses were ordered to be destroyed to the ground, so that in the future such evil people and the enemies of God and their evil deeds were not remembered anywhere ”.

Was the church involved in the decrees against the "enemies of God"? It is known that in the XVII century. punishments for witchcraft were considered an ecclesiastical, spiritual matter. On the eve of the appearance of the Decree, in ser. In 1652 Nikon became the patriarch, whose influence on secular power was initially unprecedented in Russian history.

In 1654, the troops of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich took Smolensk, which had belonged to Poland for some time. The following news of Archdeacon Paul of Aleppo (son of the Antiochian patriarch, was in Russia in 1654) has survived:

After the capture of Smolensk, the tsar (Alexei Mikhailovich) found in it many Jews who hid themselves, disguised as Christians, but the Muscovites recognized them due to their inability to make the sign of the cross. By order of the king, they were all gathered and demanded that they be baptized if they wanted to save their lives; those who believed and were baptized preserved their lives, and those who did not wish were put in wooden houses and burned.

Authorship and time of writing are especially interesting here. Therefore, already at the beginning of the second half of XVII century, the news of the burning of the Gentiles in Russia did not cause surprise in the Orthodox East. At the same time, the credibility of the message is questionable. Most likely, some rumors reached Archdeacon Paul, at least exaggerated. But the exact description of the method - burning "in a wooden house" (log house), adopted precisely in Russia, shows that the news had a real basis.

In 1658 Nikon fell. The church has gone through a period of anarchy. In 1664, the tough administrator Metropolitan Pavel took the place of the guardian of the most important Moscow diocese. In 1666 - 1667, an ill-fated church council took place, at which the Old Believers, as well as all those who did not obey the church, were anathematized and declared worthy of "corporal" execution:

And if someone does not listen to those commanded from us and will not submit to the holy Eastern Church and this consecrated cathedral, or will begin to contradict and oppose us, and we such an adversary by the power given to us ... we betray curse and anathema. … We will punish those like that spiritually: even if they begin to despise our spiritual punishment, we will apply bodily resentment to such punishment.

The peak of religious repression is associated with these two events. A week after Paul's appointment, Avvakum was arrested and exiled. Military expeditions fell upon the forest shelters of the Old Believers. Since 1666, information about burnings has become regular.

In 1666, the Old Believer preacher Vavila was seized in the Vyaznikovsky forests and after interrogation was burnt. A contemporary monk Serapion wrote with approval: "The godless monk Vavilko was burned for his stupidity." In the same 1666, the hetman of the Moscow part of Ukraine I. M. Bryukhovetsky burned six witches. The following is known about Bryukhovetsky's relations with the Moscow government.

After becoming hetman, B. began to strengthen his position with ties with Moscow. He introduced into his relations with the Moscow government that servility and servility, which the Ukrainian hetmans had abstained from until now: in his appeals to the tsar, he wrote himself "Ivashka", the "footboard" of the tsar, etc. Moscow, took the title of boyar, married the Moscow boyarina Saltykova. But the most important thing that he hoped to do with buying Moscow's favor and consolidating his position was a proposal to the Moscow government, allegedly on behalf of the country he controls, for increased interference in it. inner life... This proposal was extremely pleasing to Moscow, as it cleared the desired path for its traditional policy. Moscow governors with expanded competence and the right to collect taxes were now sent to all the big cities of Little Russia. For the purpose of taxation, a population census was organized, which aroused a general murmur. In his servility, B. went so far as to ask for the appointment of a metropolitan from Moscow, which the Moscow government refused.

In the light of the above, it is quite logical to assert Novombergsky that the burning of witches, by order of Bryukhovetsky, was the execution of Moscow legislation.

In 1670, a woman, a fugitive nun Alena, was burned. Primary sources provide the following information.

1670, December 6. Letter of the regimental commander Y. Dolgorukov to the order of the Kazan Palace on his entry into Temnikov and on the testimony of prisoners:

They brought an old woman to us, your servant, a thief and a heretic, who stole and took the army for herself and stole together with the thieves, and with her they brought thieves' conspiracy letters and roots ... , she is a peasant daughter of the city of Arzamas Vyyezdnye Sloboda, and she was married to a peasant in the same settlement; and how her husband died, and she cut her hair. And she was in many places on theft and spoiled people. And in the current de, sovereign, in 179, 1, she came from Arzamas to Temnikov, and took with her to steal many people and steal with them, and stood in Temnikov in the war yard with the chieftain with Fedka Sidorov and taught him witchcraft ... The thief was ordered to the eldress for her theft and with her they ordered the thieves' letters and roots to be burned in the log house.

"A message regarding the details of the mutiny recently carried out in Muscovy by Stenka Razin" (Arkhangelsk, September 13/23 days 1671. On the ship "Queen Esther"):

Among other prisoners, a nun was brought to Prince Yuri Dolgoruky in a man's dress, worn over a monk's attire. The nun had seven thousand men under her command and fought bravely until she was taken prisoner. She did not flinch and did not show any fear when she heard the sentence: to be burned alive. Fleeing from the monastery is considered by the Russians to be a terrible crime, punishable by death. Before she died, she wished that more people would be found who would act as they should, and fought as bravely as she, then, probably, Prince Yuri would have turned back. Before her death, she crossed herself in the Russian way: first her forehead, then her chest, calmly ascended the fire and was burned to ashes.

In 1671, the Old Believer Ivan Krasulin was burnt to death in the Pechenga Monastery - eloquently the very place of execution. In the winter of 1671/72. In Moscow, a prominent Old Believer, Abraham, was burned; a little earlier, the Old Believer Isaiah ascended the fire in Moscow.

In 1672 in Astrakhan, voivode Odoevsky burned K. Semyonov, who had a notebook with conspiracies. In general, the executions of the early 70s are easy to associate with the Razin uprising: Alyona and Semyonov took part in the uprising, Abraham and Isaiah led the dangerous Old Believer opposition in Moscow. The union of church and state in the fight against the Razin movement is indisputable - the church has anathematized Razin.

In 1673 Joachim became the patriarch, who was "a proven specialist in" work "with the Old Believers." Characteristic is the role he played in the case of the noblewoman Morozova. A friend of the first wife of Alexei Mikhailovich, a representative of a noble family, she openly made her home the center of the Old Believers in Moscow and for a long time enjoyed immunity from the persecution that reigned around the bacchanalia. It was Joachim - then the archimandrite of the Chudov Monastery - who put an end to the stronghold of the old faith. On the night of November 14, 1671, Joachim with his people came to the house of Morozova and ordered to put the recalcitrant in shackles. Soon she, along with her sister and friend, was transferred to a monastery confinement. All three, despite persuasion, continued to adhere to the Old Believers. Patriarch Pitirim considered it reasonable to free women: “Women's business; that they know a lot. " Joachim held different views. At the end of 1674, radical methods of admonition were applied to the stubborn Old Believers: torture on a rack and whip. Not having achieved success, they decided to burn Morozova, but the old Moscow boyars could not stand it and turned to the tsar with a protest - the Morozovs were one of the 16 highest aristocratic families of the Moscow state that had the right to hereditary boyars. In 1675, three noble prisoners were starved to death (while the simple nun Justinia, who was sitting with them, was nevertheless burned to death). The touching details of death have been preserved three women: they begged the guards: "Have mercy on me, give me kolachik!" The method of execution is again Christian - without the shedding of blood.

Zhenka Fedosya, accused of spoilage, went to the stake in 1674, in the northern city of Totma. Before the execution, she stated that she did not spoil anyone, she spat on herself without enduring the torture. In 1676, in the village of Sokolskoye, another royal decree ordered to burn Panko and Anoska Lomonosov, who conjured with the help of roots:

Sokolsky gunner Panka Lomonosov and his wife Anoske give them a spiritual father and tell them their guilt on a trading day in front of many people, and order them to be executed with death, burned in a log house with roots and grass.

In the same 1676 the Old Believer monk Philip, who had established ties between Avvakum and the centers of schism, was "burned by fire" in Moscow. In 1677, a pop old believer was burned to death in Cherkassk, by order of the ataman of the Don army M. Samarin.

In 1681, the church council, headed by the patriarch, addressed the tsar with a humble prayer:

We ask and pray conciliarly the Grand Duke Theodore Alekseevich, All the Great and Small and White Russia Autocrat, who are libertines and apostates, according to many church teachings and punishment and according to our bishop's petition, their conversion of true repentance will be disgusting, the holy church is disobedient, and such opponents would be pointed out Great Sovereign King and Grand Duke Fyodor Alekseevich, the Autocrat of all Great and Small and White Russia, should be sent to the city court and, according to his Sovereign's consideration, who is worthy of what, to issue a decree. And about that to the voivods and clerks, to the cities and villages that are now in the voivodeships, to send letters, and henceforth to all the voivods and clerks to write in instructions, so that this matter would be under his sovereign fear in firmness, and to the patrimonials and landowners, and to their clerks, who have such opponents and will, for the same reason, announce in the cities to bishops and governors, and who schismatics will show up where and according to the parcels of bishops become strong; and to them governors and clerks on those schismatics to send service people (that is, soldiers - E. Sh.).

On April 14, 1682, Habakkuk and three of his fellow prisoners were burned to death: Theodore, Epiphanius and Lazarus. In the literature, the motivation for the verdict is often mentioned: “for great blasphemy against the royal house,” but it was taken not from an official document, but from the notes of Count AS Matveyev, written after 1716. It is justly noted that the execution followed the decisions of the Church Council of 1681 - 82, which betrayed the Old Believers to the "city court".

In the writings of Avvakum, a lot of information has been preserved about the burning of Old Believers. Hilarion, the Sagittarius, was burnt in Kiev. Polyekt, priest, was burnt in Borovsk ("and with him 14 people were burnt"). Ivan the Fool was burnt in Kholmogory. "In Kazan, Nikonians burned thirty people, in Siberia the same number, in Vladimir - six, in Borovsk - fourteen people."

Before 1682, Kostomarov had no doubts about the burning of Old Believers before 1682 (the remarks he put into the mouths of the participants in the 1682 Old Believer uprising) - Khovansky: “Don’t keep that in your mind, so that they begin to execute you in the old way, hang and burn you in log cabins! " ...

Dispute about faith between Old Believers and Nikonians in Klyuchevsky:

The patriarch answered all the questions: "We bear the Christ image on us, and it is not for you, the laity, to teach us!" The schismatic instructor Pavel Danilovich, a Moscow bourgeoisie, in a quiet voice remarked to these self-confident words: "It is true, Vladyka, that you wear the image of Christ and we laymen should be in your obedience, but Christ showed us the image of humility, strength and with his pure lips said:" Look at me, how good and humble I am in heart, "and he did not teach people either with fires or with a sword. And the authorities had nothing to answer to these lessons. "

Patriarch's response:

We torment and burn you for that, that you call us heretics and do not obey the churches.

At the beginning of 1682, in addition, a decree appeared on the creation of the Slavic-Greek Academy, which prescribed burnings for many types of religious crimes:

From different faiths and heresies to our Orthodox Eastern faith, those who come and accept it, write them all into the books and give them to the overseer of schools with teachers, so that they can observe them in keeping our Orthodox faith and church traditions, and who of them will transmit his life in it, and whether it is strong and whole, and it contains church traditions, they had news. If any of the newly enlightened ones do not fully preserve our Orthodox faith and church traditions will appear, and such will be sent to our distant cities, to the Terek and Siberia. If anyone appears in keeping with his former faith or heresy, from it he has come to the Orthodox faith, and our faith is blasphemed, and such may be burned without any mercy (paragraph 13).

And about this, the guardian with the teachers should try to keep the hedgehog of every rank for spiritual and worldly people, magic and sorcerous and fortune-telling and all sorts of forbidden and blasphemous and God-hating books and scriptures from the church, and do not keep very much on them and do not act on them, and other things. do not teach. And they have such books or scriptures nowadays, and these books and writings are burned, and they would not keep any sorceries and sorceries and fortune-telling in the future. Likewise, unlearned people of free teachings to no one Polish, and Latin, and German, and Luther, and Calvin, and other heretical books in their homes do not keep them, for lack of content reasoning and for the sake of our faith in doubt, do not read, and nowhere none of these heretical books and their Eastern Orthodox faith and church legends do not have any contrary interpretations of competitions and do not falsify; There is no custom for the charmers, as if they, by forgering such forgeries, verb, hedgehog they do not for the sake of faith and church legends of doubt, but for the rite of a science-creating competition (in the order of a scientific dispute - E. Sh.). And such books are heretical burned or brought to the guardian of schools and teachers. If anyone is disgusted with our royal command, and from now on, someone will start from the spiritual and worldly of every rank of people, magical and sorcerous and fortune-telling and all sorts of forbidden and blasphemous and God-hating books and writings from the church in any way to keep and act according to them, and teach others to do this, either without writing such God-hating deeds to do, or to boast of such evil deeds, that he is powerful in doing such, and such a person, for reliable testimony, without any mercy, may be burned. If anyone is unskilful of free teachings to have Polish, and Latin, and German, and Lutherian, and Kalvin, and other heretical books in his house, have, and read them, and from books have a competition, and forgeries to question our Eastern faith and church traditions podlagati; and such to be executed, depending on their fault, mercilessly (paragraph 14).

If someone from foreigners and Russian people at a feast, or in any other place, with worthy witnesses, our Orthodox Christian faith or church legends blaspheme and reproach what words to say about it, and such to the court in this matter give the guardian of the schools with teachers. And if anyone, in blasphemy of our faith, or church traditions in reproachful words, appears in court, or in denial of the call of the saints for help, and the holy icons of worship and the relics of the saints of veneration, will be convicted, and such one will be burned without any mercy (paragraph 15).

So, the decree on the creation of the Academy summarized all the previous laws on the burning of apostates, holders of heretical books, blasphemers.

At the beginning of 1682 in Moscow, Marfushka Yakovleva was burned, convicted of causing damage to Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich. The preservation of the archives makes it impossible to determine the exact number of those executed in the 17th century. A pre-revolutionary researcher who studied the history of exile to Siberia at that time wrote:

In Yeniseisk, I was supposed to look at the old papers of the local archive, but unfortunately I learned that the ancient columns and other documents, after two fires, all without exception burned down.

Since the burnt-out ancient documents were placed in the Yenisei Rozhdestvensky Monastery, I decided to inspect this monastery, with the thought, whether there were any written and oral legends there. My assumption was justified in some way; In the monastery, I met a remarkable person - this is the abbess of the monastery, Abbess Devorra. According to Devorra, there was an extensive prison in the prison walls of Yeniseisk ... and a special prison section with iron bars was set up in the monastery for the placement of female criminals ... in the Ostrozh Yenisei prison there were a lot of those who were exiled to eternal imprisonment for wickedness. There was a special court for executions and, by the way, it remains in the legend that here several people were burned at the stake, convicted of acquaintance with evil spirits.