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Calendar Reform under Peter the Great: Absolutist Prerogatives, Plural Temporalities, and Christian Exceptionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2021

Andreas Schönle
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Abstract

The calendar reforms of Peter the Great introduced on January 1, 1700 have produced a surprising amount of confusion and misunderstanding. This articles proposes firstly to clarify the aims and outcomes of these reforms, so far as the available sources allow. Secondly, through an examination of the New Year celebrations mandated by Peter's edicts, the article examines the legitimating arguments that have been deployed, including ideas about Russia's relation to western countries, about the position of the Orthodox Church in the polity, and about the prerogatives of the ruler in these matters. As a result of the changing arguments invoked by Peter and his entourage, the reforms introduced a regime of plural temporalities that has affected the course of Russia's development and the elaboration of its identities to this day. The reforms had little to do with heralding a secular, modern society. If initially they represented a failed pragmatic attempt to create a civil calendar aligned with Protestant countries, their justification, once it finally settled, harked back to long-standing theological ideas about the time of the Incarnation.

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Slavic Review , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 69 - 89
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Igor Fedyukin, Jelena Pogosjan, Ernest Zitser, and my two anonymous peer reviewers for their important feedback on earlier versions of this article.

References

1. See Poole, Robert, Time’s Alteration: Calendar Reform in Early Modern England (London, 1998), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. BBC News, March 26, 2019 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47704345 (accessed August 31, 2020).

3. For the elaboration of the anno mundi era, see Mango, Cyril A., Byzantium: The Empire of the New Rome (London, 1980), 192–93Google Scholar; Rautman, Marcus Louis, Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire (Westport, CT, 2006), 6–8Google Scholar.

4. Seleshnikov, S. I., Istoriia kalendaria i khronologiia (Moscow, 1970), 156Google Scholar.

5. Some historians contend that Peter adopted the Julian calendar on January 1, 1700, which is inexact. To mention just a few, see O.F. Ageeva, Velichaishii i slavneishii bolee vsekh gradov v svete (St. Petersburg, 1999), 238; John T. Alexander, “The Petrine Era and After, 1682–1740,” in Gregory Freeze, ed., Russia: A History (Oxford, 1997), 94, 435; Robert Collis, The Petrine Instauration: Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689–1725 (Leiden, 2012), 473; and James Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 127, 170.

6. All dates in this article follow the Julian calendar, unless stated otherwise.

7. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii: Sobranie pervoe (St. Petersburg, 1830; hereafter PSZ), vol. 3, no 1735–36, 680–82, at http://nlr.ru/e-res/law_r/search.php (accessed August 31, 2020).

8. PSZ, no 1736, vol. 3, p. 681.

9. John A. McGuckin, “Calendar,” The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Chichester, UK, 2011), 1:95–97.

10. Avner Wishnitzer, Reading Clocks, Alla Turca:Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire (Chicago, 2015), 19; and Theodore H. Papadopoulos, Studies and Documents Relating to the History of the Greek Church and People under Turkish Domination (Aldershot, 1952), 88, 90.

11. The most important center for religious education was in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, where learning was entirely in Greek. See Ifigenija Draganić, “Greek and Serbian in the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy in the 18th and at the Beginning of the 19th Centuries,” in Plamen Mitev, Ivan Parvev, Maria Baramova, Vania Racheva, eds., Empires and Peninsulas: Southeastern Europe between Karlowitz and the Peace of Adrianople, 1699–1829 (Berlin, 2010), 257–66. Within the archdioceses of Ahris and Pec, Serb and Greek archbishops alternated, and close connections were kept with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. See Athanasios Angelopoulos, “The Archdioceses of Ahris and Pec on the Basis of Patriarchical Acta, edited by K. Delikanos (17th/18th Centuries)” Balkan Studies 24, no. 2 (1983): 337–42.

12. Victor Roudometof, “FromRum Millet to Green Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization, and National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453–1821,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol. 16 (1998): 11–48, 15. Roudometof argues that until 1821, religious identity entirely superseded any sense of ethnic identity in the Balkans. Dalmatians, also mentioned in the edict, were mostly Catholic and under the control of the Venetian republic. Orthodox populations within territorial control from Venice were under strong pressure to convert to Catholicism. In any case, until Napoleon’s invasion in 1797, in the Republic of Venice the New Year was celebrated on March 1. See S. Bogoiavlenskii, “Iz russko-serbskikh otnoshenii pri Petre Pervom,” Voprosy istorii, 8–9 (1946): 26.

13. Ageeva claims that the reforms were aimed at “underscoring the unity of the Orthodox world,” for which there is no evidence whatsoever, neither in intentions, nor in effect, despite the claims made in the edicts. Ageeva, Velichaishii i slavneishii, 239.

14. Draganić, “Greek and Serbian in the Ottoman Empire,” 257.

15. Uniate churches continued to follow the Julian calendar, but I have not been able to ascertain whether they used the Byzantine or the Christian era. Generally speaking, rites and practices varied significantly among Uniate churches as a consequence of accepting the church union at different times. See Witold Bobryk, “Rite Changes in the Uniate Diocese of Chelm in the 18th Century,” in Andzej Gil and Witold Bobryk, eds., On the Border of the Worlds: Essays about the Orthodox and Uniate Churches in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages and the Modern Period (Siedlec, Poland, 2010): 171–86.

16. M.M. Bogoslovskii, Petr I. Materialy dlia biografii, 5 vols. (Moscow, 2007), 2:569–72.

17. Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snoshenii s derzhavami inostrannymi, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1851–1871), 8:305–9.

18. Bogoiavlenskii, Petr I. Materialy dlia biografii, 22.

19. Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snoshenii, 9:417.

20. Ibid., 387.

21. Eberhard Schauroth, Vollständige Sammlung aller Conclusorum. Schreiben und anderer übrigen Verhandlungen des hochpreisslichen Corporis Evangelicorum, 3 vols. (Regensburg, 1751–1752), 1:183–93.

22. As we will see below, Otto Anton Pleyer, who acted as agent of the Holy Roman Empire in Moscow since 1696, was unaware of the reforms planned in Protestant principalities.

23. For dating in seventeenth-century documents in the British Isles, see https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/record-guides/old-parish-registers/change-in-calendar (accessed August 31, 2020).

24. Heinrich von Huyssen, Zhurnal gosudaria Petra I s 1695 po 1709g, sochinennyi baronom Gizenom, in F.O. Tumanskii, Sobranie raznykh zapisok i sochinenii, sluzhashchikh k dostavleniiu polnogo svedeniia o zhizni i deianiiakh gosudaria imp. Petra Velikogo, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1787–1788), 3:118–19.

25. John Perry, The State of Russia under the Present Czar (London, 1967 [1716]), 234–35. Ivan Golikov likewise references the belief that God created the world in September. See I.I. Golikov, Deianiia Petra Velikogo, mudrogo preobrazitelia Rossii, 15 vols. (Moscow, 2014 [1837]), 2:5.

26. On Peter’s interest in astronomy and on the dissemination of heliocentric ideas in Russia, see P.P. Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii pri Petre Velikom, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1862), 1: 281–83.

27. Pis΄ma i bumagi imperatora Petra Velikogo, vol. 1. (St. Petersburg, 1887), 339. This formula obtains only in formal letters to foreign dignitaries, not across his entire correspondence.

28. Lindsey Hughes, “The Petrine Year: Anniversaries and Festivals in the Reign of Peter I, 1682-1725,” in Karin Friedrich, ed., Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Lewiston, NY, 2000), 154. To place this in context, according toDvortsovye razriady (a kind of service record), since he became sole ruler upon the death of Ivan V in 1696, Peter made it a habit to dispatch officials to religious ceremonies in his stead (partly, of course, because he was away), even for important celebrations such as Easter, Christmas, or the New Year. Peter did not attend a single New Year service in the Kremlin since 1696. The entry for January 1, 1700 is silent as to his presence at the church service. SeeDvortsovye razriady, 4 vols, (St. Petersburg, 1852–55), 4:1111, at https://runivers.ru/bookreader/book451004/#page/560/mode/1up-page/548 (accessed 31 August, 2020).

29. I.I. Golikov, Deianiia Petra Velikogo, mudrogo preobrazitelia Rossii (Moscow, 1837), vol. 2, 3.

30. Golikov, Deianiia, vol. 2, 4.

31. Kiev Metropolitan Varlaam had sent Iavorskii and another bishop to Moscow in early January 1700 with a letter to Patriarch Adrian. See N.G. Ustrialov, Istoriia tsartvovania Petra Velikogo, 8 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1858), 3: 540. See also F. Ternovskii, “M. Stefan Iavorskii (biograficheksii ocherk),” Trudy Kievskoi Akademii, vol. 1 (1864), 69. Iavorskii came to the attention of Peter in late February when he was asked to deliver the funeral oration at the burial of Aleksei Shein, one of Peter’s military commanders. He was ordained Metropolitan of Riazan΄ on April 7, 1700 (Dvortsovye razriady, 4 vols., 4:1127).

32. Dvortsovye razriady, vol. 4:1111.

33. Zhurnal ili Podennaia zapiska, blazhennyia i vechnodostoinyia pamiati Gosudaria Imperatora Petra Velikogo s 1698 goda, dazhe do zakliucheniia Neishtatskogo mira: Napechatan s obretaiushchikhsa v Kabinetnoi arkhive spiskov, pravlennykh sobstvennoiu rukoi ego imperatorskogo velichestva, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1770–1772), 1:8, available at https://www.prlib.ru/item/408595 (accessed 31 August, 2020).

34. Ustrialov, 648.

35. According toDvortsovye razriady, the last complete performance of this ceremony took place in 1693 in the presence of Ivan V (Dvorstovye razriady, 4:821). This is confirmed by Johann Georg Korb, who highlights the changes to the traditional order and the absence of the blessing ceremony on the square. “The absence of the Czar,” he writes, referring to September 1, 1698, “for many years had occasioned the intermission of these rites, and, with the new-fangled ambition of our days, they were left unrevived as things worn-out and obsolete.” Johann Georg Korb, Diary of an Austrian Secretary of Legation at the Court of Czar Peter the Great, trans. and ed. Count Mac Donnell, 2 vols. (London, 1863), 1:159–60. The original is in Latin. For a Russian translation, see I.G. Korb, Dnevnik puteshestviia v Moskoviiu (1698 i 1699gg) (St. Petersburg, 1906). Descriptions of the traditional ceremony can be found in G. Georgievskii, Prazdnichnye sluzhby i tserkovnye torzhestva v staroi Moskve (Moscow, 1995 [1899]), 221–29 and in Ivan Zabelin, Domashnii byt russkikh tsarei v XVI i XVII st. (Moscow, 1895), vol. 1:380–83.

36. Dvortsovye razriady, 4:1111.

37. Golikov, Deianiia, vol. 4:3.

38. V.N. Vasil΄ev, Starinnye feierverki v Rossii (XVII-pervaia chetvert΄ XVIII veka) (Leningrad, 1960), 13–17; Simon Werret, Fireworks. Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History (Chicago, 2010), 105; and Elena Pogosian, Petr I—arkhitektor rossiiskoi istorii (St. Petersburg, 2001), 40, 171n11. For a broader discussion of Peter’s reforms of official festivities, see Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Abdication of Nicholas II, 2 vols. (Princeton, 2006), 2:21–26.

39. Friedrich Christian Weber, The Present State of Russia in Two Volumes, 2 vols. (London, 1723), 1:84–85.

40. Huyssen, 122. On the Petrine appropriation of the regulation of time, see also V.M. Zhivov, “Vremia i ego sobstvennik,” in Ocherki istoricheskoi semantiki russkogo iazyka rannego novogo vremeni (Moscow, 2009), 54–57.

41. For Yuletide rituals, see N.V. Ponyrko, “Sviatochnyi smekh,” in D.S. Likhachev, N.V. Ponyrko, and A.M. Panchenko, Smekh v drevnei Rusi (Leningrad, 1984), 154–74; E.V. Dushechkina, Russkii sviatochnyi rasskaz: Stanovlenie zhanra (St. Petersburg, 1995); L.M. Ivleva, Riazhen΄e v russkoi traditsionnoi kul΄ture (St. Petersburg, 1994).

42. N.V. Ponyrko, “Russkie sviatki XVII veka,” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury 32 (1977): 84–99.

43. L.A. Trakhtenberg, “‘Vseshuteishii sobor’ i sviazannye s nim prazdnestva Petrovskoi epokhi: Problemy proiskhozhdeniia,” at http://www.ruthenia.ru/folklore/folklorelaboratory/Trahtenberg.htm (accessed August 31, 2020).

44. Zabelin, vol. 1:388–90.

45. For evidence that for the faithful, this rite seemed offensive, see the anonymous account in Sergei Al. Belokurov, Materialy dlia russkoi istorii (Moscow, 1888), 539–40.

46. Korb, vol. 1:159–60.

47. Korb, 222–23. The sentence about Peter was characteristically omitted from the English translation.

48. For a lively description of the Most-Comical Council, see Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, 1998), 249–57. Hughes dismisses any consistent political or religious ambitions ascribed to the Council, preferring to see it as an occasion for male camaraderie and letting off steam (256).

49. See Ernest Zitser, The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great (Ithaca, 2004).

50. V.M. Zhivov likewise contends that enshrining the principle of “tsarist monarchy” was Peter’s overriding aim in his handling of the church. See V.M. Zhivov, Iz tserkovnoi istorii vremen Petra Velikogo: Issledovaniia i materialy (Moscow, 2004), 43–53. In his analysis of the Most Comical Council, however, Zhivov subscribed rather to the “propagandistic” narrative: V.M. Zhivov, “Kul΄turnye reformy v sisteme preobrazovaniia Petra I,” Iz istorii russkoi kul΄tury, 5 vols. (Moscow, 1996), 3:528–83. The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive.

51. N.B. Golikova, Politicheskie protsessy pri Petre 1 (Moscow, 1957), 133. See also “Sobranie ot sviatogo pisaniia ob antikhriste,” in Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve Istorii i Drevnostei Rossiiskikh (Jan.–Mar 1863), vol. 1:53.

52. On Talitskii and his network, see the excerpt from the legal case against him conducted by the Preobrazhenskaia chancery in: G.V. Esipov, Raskolnich΄i dela XVIII stolietiia, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1861–1863), 1:59–84.

53. Golikova, 134–45.

54. S.N. Vvedenskii, “K biografii mitropolita Stefana Iavorskogo,” Khristianskoe chtenie (August 1912): 904–7.

55. Ibid., 906.

56. Pogosian, Petr I—arkhitektor rossiiskoi istorii, 45–66.

57. Ibid., 53.

58. Robert Collis, “Merkavah Mysticism and Visions of Power in Early Eighteenth-Century Russia: The New Year Panegyrics of Stefan Javorksij, 1703–1706,” Russian Literature 75, no. 1–4 (2014): 73–109.

59. Pogosian, Petr I—arkhitektor rossiiskoi istorii, 76–95.

60. Feofan Prokopovich, “Slovo na novoe 1725 leto, propovedannoe v tsarstvuiushchem Sanktpeterburge, v tserkvi zhivonachal’nye Troitsy, Genvaria 1 dnia 1725 goda,” in Slovo i rechi pouchitel΄nye, pokhval΄nye i pozdravitel΄nye sobrannye i nekotorye vtorym tisneniem, a drugie vnov΄ napechatannye, vol. 2:113–125, esp. 116–17. “Middling matters” refers to “things of this world,” A.S.

61. Ibid, 117.

62. Donald J. Wiclox, The Measure of Times Past: Pre-Newtonian Chronologies and the Rhetoric of Relative Time (Chicago, 1987), 119–29.

63. Ibid., 188.

64. Kalendar΄ ili mesiatseslov khristianskii po staromu stiliu ili ischisleniiu na leto 1709. Ot mirobytiia zhe 7217 (Moscow, 1708).

65. Kalendar΄ ili mesiatsoslov khristianskii, po staromu stiliu, ili ischisleniiu, na leto ot voploshcheniia boga slova 1713 (Moscow, 1712).

66. This became a regular section in calendars, starting from one of the earliest calendars printed in Russia, theKalendar, ili mesiatsoslov khristianskii, po staromu stiliu, ili ischisleniiu, na leto ot voploshchenia boga slova 1713 (Moscow, 1712). Peter oversaw very carefully the publication of calendars.

67. Kalendar΄ ili mesiatsoslov na leto ot rozhdestva Gospoda nashego Iisusa Khrista, 1719 (St. Petersburg, 1718), n.p.

68. P.P. Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii pri Petre Velikom, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1862), 1:285–315, 2:331. See also Collis, 468–73. Voigt died in 1691, so despite the title of the calendar for 1715 to which Pekarskii refers, these are calendars written in the manner of Voigt, not composed by him.

69. Year chosen for availability of sources.Hamburgischer Staats-Kalender, 1726 at https://tinyurl.com/52wj56b5 (accessed March 8, 2021);Kalendar΄ ili mesiatsoslov na leto ot Rozhdestva Gospoda nashego Iisusa khrista 1726 (Moscow, 1725).

70. Calendars also included repeated explanations about various calendar systems and about astronomical phenomena such as eclipses. Initially, they included a hefty dose of astrological information, and Peter insisted on the inclusion of horoscopic forecasts about the year to come. See V.V. Alekseev, Mir russkikh kalendarei (Moscow, 2002), 41. Progressively, under the influence of the Academy of Sciences, which was given monopoly over their publication, these astrological prognostications were first called into question and eventually abolished, but that happened only as late as 1766. Zitser and Collis provide useful background information on the publication of calendars in the Petrine period and slightly beyond, including on their astrological content, see Ernest A. Zitser and Robert Collis, “On the Cusp: Astrology, Politics, and Life-Writing in Early Imperial Russia,” The American Historical Review 120.5 (December 2015): 1628–33.

71. For a sustained critique of long-standing attempts to apply the modernity paradigm to the study of the Petrine period, see Ernest A. Zitser, “Multitemporality and the politics of time in the age of Peter the Great: Rethinking Russia’s big bang,” in Paul Bushkovitch, ed., The State in Early Modern Russia: New Directions (Bloomington, 2019), 269–304.

72. Zitser, “Multitemporality and the Politics of Time,” in Bushkovitch, The State in Early Modern Russia. Zitser distinguishes between two temporal orientations, the cyclical situatedness within the succession of Christian holy days and the astrologically-interpreted position of the planets on the one hand, and the linear unfolding of the personal chronicle on the other (301–2).

73. B.I. Kurakin, “Gistoriia o tsare Petre Alekseevich, 1682–1694,” Arkhiv kniazia F.A. Kurakina, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1890), 1.

74. B.I Kurakin, “Dnevniki i putevye zametiki 1701–1710,” in Arkhiv kniazia F.A. Kurakina, Vol. 1 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1890), 1:101–240.

75. The concurrent use of the two eras in ego documents endured beyond the reign of Peter the Great. One finds it, for example, in G. P. Chernyshev’s autobiographical “Notes,” written in 1738. See Zitser and Collis, “On the Cusp,” 1622n10.

76. B.I. Kurakin, “Zhizn΄ Borisa Ivanovicha Kurakina, im samim opisanniaia, (1676–1709),” in Arkhiv kniazia F.A. Kurakina, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1890), 1:241–287, esp. 249.

77. See, for example, the statement by V.V. Bolotov, a delegate representing the Orthodox church during the calendar deliberations at the Russian Astronomical Society in 1899: “I think that Russia’s cultural mission in this regard consists of keeping the Julian calendar alive for another several centuries and thereby to facilitate the return of Western societies away from the unnecessary Gregorian reform to the uncorrupted old style.” “Zhurnal vos΄mogo zasedaniia Komissii po voprosu o reforme kalendaria, 21.12.1899,” in Postanovleniia Komissii po voprosu o reforme kalendaria v Rossii (1899), 34.

78. See D.I. Mendeleev, “Kalendarnoe ob΄΄edinenie,” and “Zaiavlenie o reforme kalendaria,” Sochineniia, vol. 22 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1950), 351–60 and 774–70, respectively.

79. On church resistance to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar after the Soviet revolution, see Freeze, Gregory L., “Counter-Reformation in Russian Orthodoxy: Popular Response to Religious Innovation, 1922–1925,” Slavic Review 54, no. 2 (1995): 305–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80. Glennie, Paul and Thrift, Nigel, Shaping the Day: A History of Timekeeping in England and Wales 1300–1800 (Oxford, 2009), 65–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.