In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter Four Trinity’s Patrons Sometime between 1398 and 1427 a landowner named Ivan Svatko, who lived in Pereiaslavl’ near the Trinity Monastery, had a scribe write a charter addressed to “my lord, the Abbot Nikon.” Ivan said he owed Nikon ten rubles. But in lieu of cash he was giving the monastery three uncultivated settlements (pustoshi) and a forest that he owned and paid taxes on (potiaglo). The charter ended with this request: “And [when] death comes for me, he should pray for my soul.”1 Although it was not strictly a donation charter, in that it described a payment of a debt, the document was one of the earliest grants, if not the first, of property to Trinity by a lay person accompanied by a request that Trinity’s brothers pray for the issuer’s soul. Ivan’s bequest was one of the earliest of 3,507 grants to Trinity of land, fiscal and judicial immunities, cash, moveable property, and combinations of these, down to 1605 in my database (Appendix Table 1). Of these grants, 3,135 were of property described in donation (dannye) charters, testaments (dukhovnye gramoty), or Trinity’s donation book and register of feasts (kormovaia kniga). Of these, 1,698 contained requests for memorial prayers. In many others such requests were implied. The documents reveal that Trinity’s benefactors manifested a faith that Sergius’s intercessory powers might save their souls and those of their kin and ancestors. But in their detailed instructions about possessions and familial relationships they also evinced a lively interest in social and business arrangements in this world. The number of memorial grants to Trinity far surpassed totals for other houses in Muscovite Russia. The data in Appendix Table 2 shows that donors came from every geographical area as well as from everysocialclassofMuscoviteRussia,testimonytotheuniversalityofSergius’s cult and the “national” scope of Trinity’s wealth. Thousands of Russians came to consider the relationship they forged with the Trinity-Sergius Monastery an ingredient of their social identity. Well before 1605 they had become a community of venerators. Over time the relationship between Trinity and SAINT SERGIUS OF RAD ONEzH 106 those who sought prayers there became formalized and complex. In this it reflected hierarchical divisions in the community and the sophistication of elite persons in defining their identity. After Sergius’s death in 1392 and for 20 years thereafter there is little evidence that people sought prayers at Trinity in return for grants, or that the monastery encouraged the practice. The turning point seems to be Edigei’s destructive raid, after which Abbot Nikon began to recruit patrons to restore the monastery. But only after 1422, when Nikon discovered and translated Sergius’s remains and proclaimed him a miracle worker, does the documentary evidence of a “grants for memorial prayers” culture become plentiful. It is impossible to date its origin exactly. Most of the early documents recording land acquisitions mentioned Nikon as abbot but few were dated. It is logical, though, to ascribe those addressed to the Trinity Monastery to period 1, 1392–1422, and those addressed to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery as coming in 1422, the year Nikon proclaimed Sergius a saint, or after. Even this classification is arbitrary. Scribal practices were primitive and some acts that did not mention Sergius as part of the name of the monastery may have recorded grants that should be dated in 1422 or after. With this in mind it is likely that benefactors gave Trinity six properties and three personal items before 1422, and that in 1422, in honor of Sergius’s sainthood the monastery received ten more grants. Eight of them were of land (including Ivan Svatko’s) and one was a large Apraksos (a New Testament organized for weekly and daily liturgical readings) with a bejeweled silver cover (oklad), commissioned by Boiar Fedor Koshka in 1392 and given to Trinity by his son Fedor Goltiai.2 But it is possible that these might have come to Trinity in Nikon’s last years, 1423–27. Most of the 14 grants of property recorded in period 1 were from local people. Vasilii Borisovich Kopnin was a boiar serving the prince of Radonezh and Afanasii Elizarovich Kniazhnin was a Radonezh landowner. One grant of land was in nearby Dmitrov, and seven others were in a district of Pereiaslavl’ adjacent to Trinity . Boiar Semen Fedorovich Morozov’s grant of a salt mine and one half of a salt works in Sol’-Galich and three grants by landowners...

Share