Bodies in Motion: Steam-Powered Pilgrimages in Late Imperial Russia*
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This essay examines the phenomenon of group pilgrimage in early twentieth-century Russia. Made possible by modern advances in technology and transportation, parish pilgrimages represented a new form of spiritual travel at the end of the imperial era, allowing greater numbers of Orthodox men and women to visit and venerate sacred sites across the length and breadth of the Russian empire. Undertaken with the blessing of Orthodox bishops and often underwritten by local merchants and entrepreneurs, organized parish pilgrimages also afforded new pedagogical opportunities for the Orthodox clergy to instruct their flock in the articles of faith, to supervise and give structure to lay devotional practices, and to assert the continued meaningfulness of the Orthodox faith against the rival claims of sectarians, secularists, and socialists alike. In adapting an age-old practice for present-day purposes, the clerical organizers of parish pilgrimages sought a spiritual solution to the crises engendered by Russia’s passage into modernity. Just as mass pilgrimages by rail and steam could accommodate greater numbers of participants, so too did they invite a wide range of multiple meanings from the Orthodox men and women who took part in them.
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1)
Victor Terras, A History of Russian Literature (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1991), 31-32. See also S. V. Kornilov, Drevnerusskoe palomnichestvo (Kaliningrad: Knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1995), 7-10.
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2)
Vera Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004); Christine D. Worobec, “Miraculous Healings,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russia, ed. Mark D. Steinberg and Heather J. Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2007), 22-43; and Robert H. Greene, Bodies like Bright Stars: Saints and Relics in Orthodox Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 2010).
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3)
Archpriest F. I. Titov, O pol’ze blagochestivago podviga puteshestviia na bogomol’e k sviatym mestam (Kiev: Tipografiia Kievo-Pecherskoi Uspenskoi lavry, 1910), 2.
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4)
A. N. Kurtsev, “Palomnichestvo v Tsentral’nom Chernozem’e (1861-1917 gg.),” in Materialy dlia izucheniia selenii Rossii. Doklady i soobshcheniia shestoi Rossiiskoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii “Rossiiskaia derevnia: istoriia i sovremennost’.” Part 1: Istoriia. Demografiia. Ekonomika. Ekologiia. Verovaniia(Moscow: Entsiklopediia Rossiiskikh Dereven’, 1997), 145; and idem, “Kul’tovye migratsii naseleniia Tsentral’nogo Chernozem’ia v 1861-1917 gg.,” in Iz istorii monastyrei i khramov Kurskogo kraia, ed. A. Iu. Drugovskaia (Kursk: KGMU, 1998), 92-96.
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6)
Charles Steinwedel, “Resettling People, Unsettling the Empire: Migration and the Challenge of Governance, 1861-1917,” in Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History, ed. Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Abby Schrader, and Willard Sunderland (London: Routledge, 2007), 128-47. For a thorough overview of the changing policies on passports and mobility, see Eugene M. Avrutin, Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2010), ch. 3-4.
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8)
Gregory L. Freeze, “Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750-1850,” in Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, ed. Jane Burbank and David L. Ransel (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1998), 210-49.
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9)
Victor Turner and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1978), esp. ch. 1. For a critique of the Turners’ thesis, see Raymond Jonas, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart: An Epic Tale for Modern Times (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2000).
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11)
T. G. Frumenkova, “Puteshestviia peterburzhtsev v Solovetskii monastyr’ v XVIII – nachale XX veka (po zapiskam sovremennikov),” in “Peterburzhets puteshestvuet.” Sbornik materialov konferentsii 2-3 marta 1995 goda (St. Petersburg: “Piligrim,” 1995), 86-95; and idem, “Puteshestviia iz Peterburga v Arkhangel’sk v XIX veke i stroitel’stvo Severnoi zheleznoi dorogi,” in Trudy Gosudarstvennogo muzeia istorii Sankt-Peterburga, vyp. 3: Peterburzhets puteshestvuet(St. Petersburg: Muzei, 1998), 33-41. As a result of unequal patterns of economic development, Catholic pilgrimage organizers in Western Europe had capitalized on the opportunities afforded by railroad transportation several decades before their Russian Orthodox counterparts. See David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village (New York: Vintage, 1995), 136-37; and Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (New York: Penguin, 1999), 258-59.
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12)
Vasilii Dushin, Vospominanie o sviatykh mestakh, ili Puteshestvie v Solovetskuiu obitel’ (Kazan: Tipografiia M. A. Gladyshevoi, 1869), 92-93.
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16)
Priest A. G. Troitskii, Narodnoe palomnichestvo v g. Murom (Nizhnii Novgorod: Tipografiia Nizhegorodskago gubernskago pravleniia, 1914), 21.
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18)
Priest A. G. Troitskii, Prikhodskoe palomnichestvo ko sviatym blagovernym kniaz’iam v g. Muroma (Nizhnii Novgorod: Tipo-litografiia tvorchestva I. M. Mashistova, 1913), 2 (emphasis mine).
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20)
Smirnov, O prikhodskikh palomnichestvakh, 9. Imperial law codes required police and local garrisons to ensure the maintenance of proper order during religious processions [krestnye khody], so “that during this time no one indulge in any sort of boisterous revelry, such as dancing, horsemanship or any sort of impropriety.” See Priest Aleksandr Tresviatskii, Kalendar’ sviashchennika (Samara: Tipo-litografiia N. A. Zhdanova, 1893), 161-62.
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21)
Priest Ioann Antoninov, Palomnichestvo iz Ekaterinburga v Verkhotur’e, 6-24 maia 1914 g. (Ekaterinburg: Elektro-tipografiia A. P. Vel’ts, 1914), 6.
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22)
Smirnov, O prikhodskikh palomnichestvakh, 28-30. On underwriting group pilgrimage, see also Troitskii, Prikhodskoe palomnichestvo, 2.
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23)
Debra Coulter, “Ukrainian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 988-1914,” Ukrainian Review, 43, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 73.
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24)
Priest F. N. Sin’kevich, Palomnichestvo v Chernigov (Kiev: n.p., 1916), 1.
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26)
Troitskii, Narodnoe palomnichestvo, 5-6. See also Priest A. P. Mramornov, Velikoe palomnichestvo Saratovskikh Arkhipastyrei, pastyrei i mirian v Sedmiezerskuiu pustyn’ Kazanskoi eparkhii (Saratov: Tipografiia Soiuza pechatnogo dela, 1911), reprinted in A. P. Mramornov, Sochineniia, zapiski, eparkhial’nye khroniki, publitsistika, ed. A. I. Mramornov (Saratov: Nauchnaia kniga, 2005), 190. On secular tourism and sight-seeing in the late imperial period, see Christopher Ely, “The Origins of Russian Scenery: Volga River Tourism and Russian Landscape Aesthetics,” Slavic Review, 62, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 666-82.
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33)
A. Mel’nikov, Putevoditel’ dlia palomnika v Serafim-Sarovskuiu pustyn’ (Nizhnii Novgorod: n.p., 1903); and D. D. Ivanchenko, K sviatym mestam (Saratov: n.p., 1911), 15-16. On the importance of self-privation in Russian pilgrimage, see Kurtsev, “Palomnichestvo v Tsentral’nom Chernozem’e,” 143; and M. M. Gromyko, Mir russkoi derevni (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1991), 116-20.
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35)
Archpriest I. A. Khil’tov, Palomnicheskaia poezdka uchenikov Bezhetskago dukhovnago uchilishcha v Solovetskii monastyr’ (Tver: Tipo-litografiia N. M. Rodionova, 1912), 13-15.
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36)
Smirnov, O prikhodskikh palomnichestvakh, 22-23. On the strains that monastic communities faced in accommodating an increasing numbers of pilgrims at the turn of the last century, see Worobec, “Unintended Consequences.”
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37)
K. K. Kokovtsov, Poezdka v Solovetskii monastyr’ (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia Iu. N. Erlikh, 1901), 27. On the hardships endured by pilgrims to Solovki, see S. D. Protopopov, Iz poezdki v Solovetskii monastyr’ (Moscow: Tvorchestvo tipografii A. I. Mamontova, 1903). The most comprehensive English-language work on Solovki is Roy R. Robson, Solovki: The Story of Russia Told Through its Most Remarkable Islands (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2004).
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38)
A. G. Troitskii, Palomnichestvo ko Sv. Muromskim Chudotvortsam (Nizhnii Novgorod: Tipografiia M. A. Rusinovoi, 1917), 6. See also Sin’kevich, Palomnichestvo, 1-3; and Smirnov, O prikhodskikh palomnichestvakh, 23, 43. On the importance of fasting in preparation for holy communion, see Priest I. N. Bukharev, O postakh v pravoslavnoi tserkvi, 5th ed. (Moscow: Tipografiia L. F. Snegireva, 1888), 8-9.
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39)
Archpriest Aleksandr Kudriavtsev, Naputstvennoe slovo otpravliaiushchimsia na poklonenie sv. mestam (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia V. Kirshbauma, 1884).
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40)
Mramornov, Velikoe palomnichestvo, 188, 189. On the banning of alcohol during parish pilgrimages, see also Smirnov, O prikhodskikh palomnichestvakh, 28-30. Popular tradition in the northern reaches of the empire held that a pilgrim boat would sink or circle aimlessly if “sinful” passengers were onboard. See Laura Stark, Peasants, Pilgrims, and Sacred Promises: Ritual and the Supernatural in Orthodox Karelian Folk Religion. Studia Fennica Folkloristica 11 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2002), 165-66.
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43)
Troitskii, Prikhodskoe palomnichestvo, 2-3. Fortunately, the ship’s crew could accommodate the extra passengers and showed “particular attention to the pilgrims’ comforts” for the duration of the voyage.
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47)
Ivan Savchenko, Molitvennyia vozdykhaniia bogomol’tsa pri poseshchenii Kievskikh blizhnikh peshcher i poklonenie netlennym moshcham sviatykh ugodnikov Bozhiikh, tam pochivaiushchikh (Kiev: Tipografiia M. D. Ivanovoi, 1893), 4, 9, 22.
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64)
A. I. Mramornov, Zhiznennyi put’ sviashchennika Aleksandra Petrovicha Mramornova (1874-1941): K 130-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Saratov: Privolzhskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 2004), 43.
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65)
Scott M. Kenworthy, “The Mobilization of Piety: Monasticism and the Great War in Russia, 1914-1916,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 52 (2004): 399.
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66)
P. N. Zyrianov, Russkie monastyri i monashestvo v XIX i nachale XX veka (Moscow: Russkoe slovo, 1999), 273.
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Bodies in Motion: Steam-Powered Pilgrimages in Late Imperial Russia*
In: Russian HistorySearch for other papers by Robert H. Greene in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This essay examines the phenomenon of group pilgrimage in early twentieth-century Russia. Made possible by modern advances in technology and transportation, parish pilgrimages represented a new form of spiritual travel at the end of the imperial era, allowing greater numbers of Orthodox men and women to visit and venerate sacred sites across the length and breadth of the Russian empire. Undertaken with the blessing of Orthodox bishops and often underwritten by local merchants and entrepreneurs, organized parish pilgrimages also afforded new pedagogical opportunities for the Orthodox clergy to instruct their flock in the articles of faith, to supervise and give structure to lay devotional practices, and to assert the continued meaningfulness of the Orthodox faith against the rival claims of sectarians, secularists, and socialists alike. In adapting an age-old practice for present-day purposes, the clerical organizers of parish pilgrimages sought a spiritual solution to the crises engendered by Russia’s passage into modernity. Just as mass pilgrimages by rail and steam could accommodate greater numbers of participants, so too did they invite a wide range of multiple meanings from the Orthodox men and women who took part in them.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 235 | 40 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 80 | 7 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 54 | 16 | 0 |