Stones on the Prairie: Acculturation in Texas

Regarding the Good Order of the Monastery: The Tipik Solovetskago and the Integration of the Spiritual with the Temporal in the Early Seventeenth Century

Rude & Barbarous Kingdom Revisited: Essays in Russian History and Culture in Honor of Robert O. Crummey. Chester S. L. Dunning, Russell E. Martin, and Daniel Rowland, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008, 251–67.       Regarding the Good Order of the Monastery: The Tipik Solovetskago and the Integration of the Spiritual with the Temporal in the Early Seventeenth Century Jennifer B. Spock General Introduction The  desire  to  live  a  right  life  in  order  to  attain  salvation  is  best  known  in  the   medieval  Christian  tradition,  both  East  and  West,  in  the  form  of  its  monastic   life.  Ideally,  a  hermit  alone  in  the  wilderness  or  a  monk  engaged  in  the  activ-­‐‑ ity  of  a  cloister  led  an  ascetic,  contemplative  life  of  prayer,  fasting,  labor,  and   observance.  It  has  been  argued  that  in  Russia  the  influence  of  the  monastics   began   to   wane   in   the   16th   century,   increasing   the   importance   of   the   parish   clergy  and  resulting  in  an  Orthodoxy  that  looked  less  toward  monastic  spiri-­‐‑ tual  fathers  for  moral  guidance  and  more  toward  homiletic  texts.1  Yet  monas-­‐‑ ticism  remained  a  strong  thread  in  the  pre-­‐‑Petrine  Russian  religious  experi-­‐‑ ence.   Monastic   leaders   played   a   significant   role   in   the   conversion   of   the   eastern   Slavs   and   in   the   maintenance   of   Orthodox   society   and   Orthodox   praxis   in   pre-­‐‑Petrine   Russia.   Well   into   the   17th   century   elite   and   non-­‐‑elite   alike  continued  to  send  gifts  and  cash  to  monastic  houses  so  that  the  monks   would  pray  for  the  souls  of  the  dead.  Monks  were  perceived  as  leading  an   “angelic”   life   which   rendered   their   prayers   more   pleasing   to   God   and   thus   more  efficacious.                                                                                                                             Research  for  this  article  was  supported  in  part  by  a  grant  from  the  International  Re-­‐‑ search  &  Exchanges  Board  (IREX),  with  funds  provided  by  the  National  Endowment   for  the  Humanities,  the  United  States  Information  Agency,  and  the  U.  S.  Department   of  State.  Also  contributing  was  a  grant  from  the  Joint  Committee  on  the  Soviet  Union   and   its   Successor   States   of   the   Social   Science   Research   Council   and   the   American   Council  of  Learned  Societies  with  funds  provided  by  the  State  Department  under  the   Russian,  Eurasian,  and  East  European  Training  Program  (Title  VIII).  None  of  these  or-­‐‑ ganizations  is  responsible  for  the  views  expressed.  Other  funding  was  provided  by:   the  Henry  Rice  Scholarship,  Center  for  International  and  Area  Studies,  Yale  Univer-­‐‑ sity;   John   F.   Enders   Research   Assistance   Grant,   Yale   University;   Hilandar   Research   Library  and  the  Resource  Center  for  Medieval  Slavic  Studies,  The  Ohio  State  Univer-­‐‑ sity;  University  Research  Committee  Grant,  Eastern  Kentucky  University.   1  Paul  Bushkovitch,  Religion  and  Society  in  Russia:  The  Sixteenth  and  Seventeenth  Centu-­‐‑ ries  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press,  1992).   252 JENNIFER B. SPOCK One  of  the  largest  of  Russia’s  religious  houses  was  the  Monastery  of  the   Transfiguration  of  the  Savior  and  the  Dormition  of  the  Mother  of  God,  com-­‐‑ monly  known  as  the  Solovki  Monastery.  Solovki  was  founded  around  1430  on   an  island  of  the  same  name  in  the  middle  of  the  White  Sea,  and  had  become  a   substantial  house  by  the  1560s,  including  no  less  than  200  monks  and  300  ser-­‐‑ vants.2  Solovki  was  somewhat  unusual  as  an  example  of  cloistered  living,  for   its  monks  were  less  confined  than  in  many  other  monasteries.  The  brothers   were  both  wealthy  and  impoverished  men  from  the  settlements,  villages,  and   towns   of   the   north,   along   with   some   men   from   Moscow   and   other   central   towns.  Hailing  from  the  northern  forests  and  villages  of  the  White  Sea  region,   most  of  the  monks  came  to  tonsure  after  a  life  lived  in  the  wilderness—a  life   of  trading,  trapping,  fishing,  salt-­‐‑production,  or  artisanal  activity.3  These  men   turned  their  occupations  to  the  service  of  the  monastery  even  as  they  took  on   the  mantle,  and  so  as  monks  they  often  continued  to  move  freely  about  north-­‐‑ ern   Russia   engaged   in   trapping,   fishing,   salt-­‐‑production,   or   trade.   In   their   turn,  northern  trappers,  traders,  and  peasants  engaged  in  business  daily  en-­‐‑ tered  Solovki’s  portals  in  addition  to  pilgrims  who  came  to  venerate  Solovki’s   patron  saints,  Zosima  and  Savatii.  Although  interaction  with  the  laity  was  not   unusual  for  a  monastic  community,  Solovki  monks  engaged  in  business  with   regions  hundreds  of  miles  from  the  cloister,  from  the  eastern  lands  beyond   the  White  Sea  to  as  far  south  as  Moscow.     The  Solovki  community  aspired,  nonetheless,  to  integrate  the  ideal  forms   of  the  monastic  life  into  its  daily  routines.  Like  many  other  Russian  monas-­‐‑ teries  it  was  neither  completely  cenobitic  (communal),  nor  purely  idiorrhyth-­‐‑ mic  (a  form  of  monasticism  in  which  hermits  lived  in  separate...