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The One-Day Votive Church: A Religious Response to the Black Death in Early Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Russell Zguta
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Abstract

In 1892, as Moscow prepared to celebrate the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Sergei of Radonezh, an article appeared in the Moskovskiia vedomosti which suggested that one appropriate way to mark the occasion would be to erect a replica of the small wooden Church of the Holy Trinity built by Saint Sergei at the site of his famed monastery north of Moscow. The article further urged that the project be a cooperative effort and that the proposed church be constructed in one day (that is, a twenty-four-hour period), in the tradition of the obydennye khramy of old.’ The tradition which the civic-minded writer of the article tried to revive dated back to the late fourteenth century. The early Russian chronicles record nineteen one-day votive churches built between 1390 and 1552, all as a response to the pestilence then raging. Ten of these were constructed in Novgorod, nine in Pskov. In addition, four others, one each in Moscow, Iaroslavl', Vologda, and Viatka, can be documented from other sources. All were built of wood in a twenty-four-hour period by communal labor.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , Fall 1981 , pp. 423 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1981

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References

This article was supported in part by funds from the Research Council of the University of Missouri, Columbia and by a grant from the National Library of Medicine (N1H LM 03163) which 1 gratefully acknowledge. Sincere thanks are also due the staff of the Slavic Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for their expert, untiring help.

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4. The four others were in Moscow, St. Iliia (1480), Dmitrii, Zelenin, “'Obydennyia’ polotentsa i obydennye khramy” Zhivaia starina, 20, no. 1 (1911): 16Google Scholar; in Iaroslavl', the Savior (1612), Ioann Solov'ev, laroslavskii Spasoproboinskiiobydennyi khram (Iaroslavl', 1869); in Vologda, Our God and Savior Jesus Christ (1654), S. A. Belokurov, “Skazanie “; in Viatka, Ekaterinskaia obydennaia tserkov' (late sixteenth-early seventeenth century), Zelenin, “'Obydennyia’ polotentsa,” p. 16.

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6. Zelenin, “'Obydennyia'polotentsa,” p. 16.

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9. Ibid., p. 46.

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24. See notes 2 and 3 above for a listing of all the obydennye khramy recorded in the chronicles.

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44. Ibid., p. 15.

45. R. E. F. Smith has made the interesting, if unsubstantiated, observation that the rapid construction of the obydennye khramy was perhaps made possible because “the timbers gathered from the forest were prepared and probably numbered in advance” ( Smith, , Peasant Farming in Muscovy [Cambridge, 1977], p. 78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

46. Belokurov, “Skazanie,” p. 15.

47. Ibid., p. 16. Uvarov describes and gives the dimensions of the icon ( “Materialy,” p. 46).

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54. See note 4 above.

55. Zelenin, “'Obydennyia'polotentsa,” p. 19.

56. In some Ukrainian villages there had survived well into the mid-nineteenth century the custom of building one-day wooden “cholera crosses” during serious outbreaks of the disease. Evgenii Perfetskii believed that this Ukrainian custom of one-day wooden crosses sprang from a common ancient East Slavic obydennyi tradition (Perfetskii, “'Kholernye’ kresty,” Zhivaia starina, 24 [1915], appendix 3, p. 036 [sic]).

57. Zelenin, “’ Obydennyia’ polotentsa,” pp. 14-15.

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66. Nasonov, , Pskovskie letopisi, 1:102Google Scholar.

67. Novombergskii, , Vrachebnoe stroenie, p. 319 Google Scholar.

68. PSRL, vol. 3: Novgorodskaia vtoraia letopis', p. 155.

69. Derbek, , Istoriia chumnykh epidemii, pp. 35, 38Google Scholar.

70. PSRL, vol. 3: Novgorodskaia tret'ia letopis', p. 251. This is the last recorded instance of a oneday votive church in the chronicles.

71. Only recently have scholars begun to explore some of the broader implications of the Black Death and its impact on Russia. In addition to Lawrence N. Langer's article “Black Death in Russia, “see Lawrence N. Langer, “Plague and the Russian Countryside: Monastic Estates in the Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 10, no. 3 (Fall 1976): 351-68. A discussion of the possible sociopolitical consequences of the plague in Muscovy can be found in Gustave Alef s study, “The Crisis of the Muscovite Aristocracy: A Factor in the Growth of Monarchical Power, “ Forschungen zur osleuropaischen Geschichte, 15 (1970): 36-40.

72. The literature on the Black Death is extensive. A sample of recent scholarship on the impact of the Black Death on Europe can be found in Bowsky, William M., ed., The Black Death: A Turning Point in History? (New York, 1971 Google Scholar). See also John Norris's important article “East or West? The Geographic Origin of the Black Death,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 51, no. 1 (Spring 1977): 1-24. With reference to individual countries and regions, the following studies are available: Biraben, Jean-Noel, Les hommes et la peste en France el dans les pays europeens et mediterraneens, 2 vols. (Paris, 1975–76Google Scholar); Dols, Michael W., The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton, 1977)Google ScholarPubMed; Shrewsbury, J. F. D., A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar.

73. Recall the appeals of the people of Pskov to the hierarchy of Novgorod in 1352and 1360under similar circumstances.

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75. Ibid., p. 42.

76. Biraben, , Les hommes et la pesle, 2:70-74Google Scholar.

77. Ziegler, , Black Death, pp. 267–68Google Scholar. Among the more unusual religious responses to the plague in the West was the appearance of the so-called Brotherhood of the Flagellants or Bretheren of the Cross. The movement apparently originated in Eastern Europe, perhaps in Hungary. It took firm root in Germany, whence it spread between 1348 and 1350 to other countries (ibid., p. 88). The Flagellants, ranging in number from several hundred to a thousand at any given time, would enter a village or town, recite their prescribed litany in the local church, and then proceed to engage in collective flagellation in the market square or some public place. According to Ziegler, fear was the motive force behind the movement. While the Flagellants no doubt performed their painful, bizarre ritual in expiation for personal guilt, they did so also “in the hope that their sacrifice might induce God to lift from his people the curse that was destroying them” (ibid., p. 96).

78. Biraben, , Les hommes et la peste, 2: 75Google Scholar.

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82. Rice, Tamara Talbot, A Concise History of Russian Art (New York, 1963), pp. 114–20 Google Scholar.

83. In two of the standard works on Russian wooden architecture ( Krasovskii, M. V., Kurs istorii russkoi arkhitektury, pt. 1Google Scholar: Dereviannoe zodchestvo [St. Petersburg, 1916] and 1. Zabello, la., Russkoe dereviannoe zodchestvo [Moscow, 1942]Google Scholar), there is no mention of the one-day votive church.