The Laws of Church and State
And the Russian Family
in the Sixteenth Century



In a radio broadcast in 1939, Sir Winston Churchill spoke of Russia as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Throughout its history, Russia has been kept isolated from the influences of the West, both by geographic barriers and internal ideology, so that even those leaders, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, who promoted Westernization could meet with only partial success. Russia's unique national identity, nationalism and internal conditions, in the absence of the process of Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment that served as the historical basis for the development and evolution of the law, of religion and of virtually every other aspect of life in the West, served as the basis for Russia's growth. Since the Middle Ages, Russia has been active in world politics, exerting throughout history, a powerful influence on the nations with which it has had contact. And yet, it has remained mysterious, growing and evolving in its own way while the watching world has been kept at bay.

Churchill applied his analogy in a broad generalization. However it is no less true when looked upon in more specific terms. For all that has been known, or assumed, about Russian foreign policy - an issue that has been studied, researched and debated repeatedly in the West practically from the time the first trade agreements were reached between German princes and the Slavic tribes of the pre-Christian land that would be Russia - very little has been known about the nation itself. Assumptions, both fair and unfair, have been made and broad stereotypes applied, but until the latter half of this century, in depth examinations of the life of the common Russian peasant were indeed rare, and those early studies that do exist were made by émigré writers and scientists. The West, though at times expressing an interest, was not interested enough to truly explore the rich tapestry of Russian life. It seems ironic that, although Russia has long been an important player on the world stage, Western writers, social scientists and philosophers have dedicated more effort and more volumes to unlocking the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia or Byzantium than to our modern global neighbor.

The Russian national character, described by Richard Terrill as a perception of strength, power and moral superiority, but displaying "an unqualified submissiveness to their leaders," is by no means a Western myth. Yet Terrill's observations do not provide a complete picture and are in many ways misleading. The submissiveness of which he speaks can be attributed to the oppression of the serfs. With more than ninety percent of the nations population uneducated and tied to the land, there was little hope of advancement of social position. Generations had had no option other than to submit to their masters and could teach their children no other way of life.

Yet there is another truth, one that remained hidden even in the contemporary society in which these peasants lived. Found only in obscure documents and occasionally alluded to in edicts of the Russian Orthodox church, there exists evidence that that submission was not complete, at least in regards to such private matters as the conduct and composition of the family. There can be no argument that the church was a powerful institution, that the faith was, for the most part, eventually accepted by virtually the entire population, and that the common Russian people practiced at the very least the superficial aspects of Orthodoxy. However, within the family, ancient customs continued to prevail, and actual practice deviated significantly from the canon law of the Orthodox church.

Orthodoxy had its most significant impact among the nobility. Narrowing the scope further still, the social position and rights of women were perhaps the most radically changed aspect of life after the introduction of the faith. There, too, among the nobility, the changes were most extreme. The customs applied to and roles assigned to women in Russia at the time when the Domostroi appeared in the form of several handwritten manuscripts were taken directly from Byzantium and from the Orthodox canon law, particularly from the compilation of the first seven Holy Ecumenical Councils held between the third and seventh centuries AD, which to this day serves as the ultimate resource on canon law in all Orthodox faiths. While the Ecumenical Councils addressed such matters as betrothal, marriage, adultery and divorce, the canons reveal nothing as regards family dynamic and relations between the sexes. Little has been written on this subject through the ages and in fact it appears that theologians and the councils have made a point of avoiding it. For a frank and detailed discussion of Orthodox views of marriage and relations between husband and wife, we must turn to the sermons of St. John Chrysostom, texts written in the fourth century and which remain today as the most influential on the topic in the Orthodox world.

In the early centuries of Christianity and up through the Middle Ages in some Orthodox lands, marriage was a civil matter. A prescribed rite of matrimony within the church and to be performed by a priest existed, but was not necessary. The couple had simply to appear before a local official in their town, declare their consent and receive a certificate of registration. The practice of civil marriage was abolished in Byzantium by Ecclesiastical decree in 893AD, nearly a century before the introduction of Orthodoxy to the Slavic tribes, however the practice remained common in rural areas of Russia throughout the nation's history. The ceremony itself was developed not as a sacrament and was not considered so until the Council of Lyons in 1274, but to purge elements of the old pagan religions from the marriage festivities. St. John Chrysostom wrote:

Nowadays on the day of a wedding people dance and sing hymns to Aphrodite, songs full of adultery, corruption of marriages, illicit loves, unlawful unions, and other impious and shameful themes. They accompany the bride in public with unseemly drunkenness and shameful speeches… introducing corrupt thoughts into the soul of the bride. Do not the subsequent evils begin here?

In response to these so-called pagan elements, the marriage ceremony was developed, the earliest versions of which are lost to history. The present ceremony as it exists in the Orthodox church has been in use only since the twelfth century. Betrothal, too, became significant and eventually, an elaborate ritual developed around it. Canon law has much to say on this topic:

A legal and true betrothal must be accompanied with the ceremony of solemnization in church… with an exchange of arrhae and with the customary kiss of engaged persons. …an engagement made in such a fashion, though inferior to a wedding, as it is accounted nearly equal to a complete wedding, and those who have become engaged, if their fiancee should die… they may not marry any other woman, on the ground that they would thereby be making themselves bigamists… all prohibitions pertaining to persons completely married shall apply also to those who have been betrothed…

In the early years of Christianity, perhaps the most discussed issue related to the family concerned not marriage itself, but the necessity of it. Many early treatises exist, written by celibate monks and bishops, denouncing the institution and encouraging celibacy as the only acceptable lifestyle for a true Christian. Procreation, they believed, was a means of immortality, a continuation of the existence of the parents, and with Christ's promise of life eternal, was no longer required in the Christian world. Others, most significantly St. John Chrysostom, adopted a radically different view, and this became the policy of the Orthodox church. Marriage in the Orthodox world is defined by a three-fold purpose:

First, to continue the creative work which God inaugurated with the creation of the first man and woman, thus propagating the human species. Second, to provide physical and moral assistance to two individuals who have placed themselves willingly under the same yoke.

The third purpose is best described by St. Paul:

Because of the temptation for adultery, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife, to her husband. For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.

A great deal of the early church literature promotes and demands the institutionalized oppression of women, and this factor as much as any other was readily adopted by the Russian nobility. Women in Orthodox society were regarded as nothing more than property, even as a necessary evil. For all his comparatively enlightened talk of marriage partners as equals, sharing one life, one body, St. John Chrysostom had some rather harsh - but typical - words in his essay "How to Choose a Wife", here on the subject of worldly versus domestic affairs:

…this is the work of God's generosity and wisdom, that he who is good at the greater matters is inferior and quite useless in the lesser matters, so that the help of a woman is necessary to him. If God had made man capable in both areas, it would have been easy for men to despise womankind. … God provided for peace by reserving a suitable position for each. He divided our life into these two parts, and gave the more necessary and important to the man, but the lesser and inferior part to the woman. In this way, He arranged that we should admire the man… and that the woman… would not rebel against her husband.

The view of woman as inherently evil was also a common one, and responsible in part for this oppression. Citing the temptation of Eve and the story of Lilith, women were regarded as the corrupters of man. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that "It was necessary to make woman as a partner in the work of procreation; not indeed to help in any other work." Citing the historical evolution of these attitudes, Paul Evdokimov summed up by saying that woman was regarded as "entirely in the service of nature, reduced to being merely a perpetual womb," and that, citing the philosopher Schopenhauer, she was "a trap of nature, demonically clever, she leads man to marriage and to copulation."

These attitudes reached Russia in the year 988AD when the Slavic tribes were converted to Orthodoxy. It is here necessary to stress that the conditions in which women lived and the attitudes toward them were quite different in pre-Christian Russia. Among these tribes, women enjoyed a great deal of autonomy, and having rights equal to those of men, could possess land, initiate contracts in regard to business and marriage and shared as partners and equals in the work of the survival of the family. Although the definitions of such personal matters as family, marriage and the inter-relationships among the members of the household differed dramatically from one tribe to the next and even more so from the new customs and social mores being introduced from Byzantium, it is claimed that all of the people welcomed these changes, converted in a single day, and that the old pagan religion of the Slavs was banished. True, it was systematically destroyed by the young Russian Orthodox Church, and therefore disappeared from history. However, elements of the old religion and customs remained common and were practiced, both secretly and publicly, and had not been completely stamped out even by the reign of Ivan the Terrible. This fact is supported by archived documents of provincial ecclesiastical councils according to which, in the words of Maxime Kovalevsky:

…the local clergy were engaged in constant warfare with the shameful licentiousness which prevailed at the evening assemblies of the peasants, and more than once the clergy succeeded in inducing the authorities of the village to dissolve the assemblies by force. The priests were often wounded, and obliged to seek refuge…

Kovalevsky's studies of the Russian peasant family throughout the ages reveal a great deal about the superficiality of the acceptance of Orthodoxy in rural regions of Russia. In spite of the position of the Orthodox church on the matter of divorce - it was permitted only in the case of adultery, and only if the adulterous spouse happened to be the woman - it was a common practice among the peasants for a husband to allow his wife to contract a 'marriage,' either for a given term or as a permanent union, with another man. This was not regarded as a divorce, but rather as a civil contract, a business arrangement.

Marriage was viewed as an arbitrary matter, and although efforts were made throughout the centuries to require that all unions be overseen by the church, all of these efforts failed. An assembly of Divines convened by Ivan the Terrible to consider the problem "which everywhere prevailed of omitting the religious consecration of the marriage tie" called for "strong measures in consequence taken against those who did not comply with the requirements of the clergy." These strong measures generally consisted of fines and penalties, which were no more costly than the payment required for a ceremony in the church.

Other sanctions in place to control and regulate these civil marriage contracts included an edict which stated that person who married without the consent of their parents would lose all rights to inheritance and dowry, perhaps an effecting measure among the nobility, but among the serfs and free peasants, it was unlikely that the parents had land or material possessions to be inherited, and it was therefore an empty threat.

Since betrothal was regarded by the church as almost equal to marriage, there were attempt to regulate the "abuse" of the institution of marriage by penalizing those who had become engaged and later broken the contract, and by this means promote church ceremonies. However, the penalty for a broken engagement also carried a monetary penalty which could be invoked only by the court if the dishonored party sought compensation. Since marriage was not regarded as a particularly significant matter among the peasant class, it was rare for this law to be put into practice.

There are several possible explanations for this less than total impact of Orthodox on the common family and their reluctance to accept the teachings of the church, particularly in regard to matters concerning the family. Most significantly, the hard life of the Russian peasant made total acceptance of the church impossible. They were subjected to oppressive taxation, for the purpose of which they continued to live in family communes with many generations and large numbers of people crowded together under one roof, so that there would be more individuals to contribute to the household taxes. As Kovalevsky pointed out, so many people living so closely together does little to promote the Orthodox definitions of decency and morality. It is therefore not surprising that in some areas, most notably "in the district of Onega… where the peasants to their best to infringe the canonical prescriptions" and in the government of Archangel, incest remained common. It was believed in these regions that marriage between blood relations would be "blessed with a more rapid increase of 'cattle,'" the word 'cattle' referring to children, and therefore, more workers to assist in the fields. This practice runs directly counter to canon law, which states:

…any man that has sexual intercourse with his sister where both parties are children of the same parents, i.e., if she is his sister-german, or full- blooded sister by both father and mother, like an involuntary manslaughterer, or, more expressly, with a sentence of twenty years…

and:

…canonizes eleven years to any man who has sexual intercourse with his step-sister, or half-sister, that is, a sister by the father alone, or by the mother alone, asserting that until he abstains from such illicit practice he is not to be permitted to enter the Church…

However, excommunication, even for an extended period, hardly seems an effective penalty when the church played such a small part in the lives of the people.

The demands placed on the serfs by their masters also contributed to this condition. They were required to work long hours, with little time off, and were left with only Sundays and church holidays on which to work for their own benefit. In this small measure of time, it was necessary to produce not only enough to support their household communities, but also to pay their taxes.

And what of the Orthodox attitude toward women? It was perhaps adopted more than any other tenet related to the family, however it was a luxury that the peasants could not afford. By Orthodox standards, women should not be seen outside the home and should contribute nothing to the support of the family, save maintaining the home and caring for the children. However in the peasant household communities, it was necessary for women to work the fields alongside the men in order for the family to meet its obligations.

Finally, virtually all of the peasants were uneducated and illiterate. At the time Orthodoxy was adopted by the fledgling Russian state, written language itself was only recently introduced and from that time on, education was reserved for the nobility and those entering the service of the church. The language of the Scripture was lofty and beyond the comprehension of the majority of the population.

Up through the sixteenth century, religion in Russia was the domain of the nobility and the educated merchant classes, and it was through them that the church reached the height of its power. The families of these classes lived as the church prescribed, or at least lived a closer approximation to the ideal set forth by Orthodox tradition. It can therefore be said that the women of the noble families encountered the greatest and most dramatic changes in their social position under Orthodoxy.

In the sixteenth century, while the Orthodox church was fighting against the remnants of paganism and its festivals which were still fairly common amongst the peasantry, the Domostroi, a guide to family life, surfaced. A few of the original handwritten manuscripts survived through the ages and offer us a glimpse of what the ideal family life was thought to be. Although the origin of the Domostroi is in dispute, it is thought to be the work of a priest of the Kremlin Cathedral of the Annunciation, Sil'vestr, as a guide for his son. Whether or not it was written by Sil'vestr or merely that the handwritten copy on which his name appeared is the oldest to survive, several generalizations can be made and assumptions drawn in regards to this text. By examining the content of the work, it can be assumed that the author was wealthy, supported many children and servants and lived in an urban environment, that he had few if any rural holdings, as he gives detailed instructions on the buying of supplies from a market and that he was active in social circles where one might hear gossip related to "princesses and boyars' wives". None of this serves to disqualify Sil'vestr as a possible author, but does raise other possibilities and sheds some light on precisely which class of families the text was meant for.

In tone and content, the Domostroi bears uncanny resemblance to the sermons of St. John Chrysostom, and of course, it is entirely plausible that the author was familiar with the ancient texts and drew on them to create a guide for 'modern life' in sixteenth century Russia.

One theme that appears throughout the pages of the Domostroi in every passage which refers to the relations between husband and wife is the absolute subjugation of women to their husbands. The following are the words of St. John Chrysostom:

Why does Paul speak of the husband being joined to the wife, but not the wife to the husband? Since he is describing the duties of love, he addresses the man. He speaks to the woman concerning respect. Saying that the husband is the head of his wife, as Christ is the head of the Church…

This quote goes far in summing up the content of the Domostroi in regards to husbands and wives. The husband is responsible for his wife, and the wife responsible for doing all she can to please her husband. The text advises that "Every day a wife should consult with her husband and should ask what he requires of her," and goes so far as to say that "A wife should not eat or drink without her husband's knowledge, nor conceal food or drink from him. Nor should she have secrets from her husband."

The author reinforces his point on the subservience of women by restating Proverbs 12:4, "A capable wife is her husband's crown," as "A capable, long-suffering and silent wife is her husband's crown." In a matter as basic as attendance of church services, the Domostroi states that "Women should go to God's churches as they are able, with the consent of and according to the advice of their husbands."

The segregation of women into separate apartments within the household community, as well, dates from the earliest days of the Orthodox faith. St. John Chrysostom's Sermon on Marriage states that the dutiful husband strives to "keep her from speaking or hearing [harsh] words. He has arranged for private chambers, women's apartments, guards, doors and locks. He has allowed her to go out only in the evening, to be seen only by members of the family." The Domostroi is only slightly less restrictive, allowing that a woman may invite friends into her home, but when she does "she must obey her husband's commands. While entertaining guests or visiting, she should wear her best clothes. During meals, she should not drink alcohol. A drunk man is bad, but a drunk woman is not fit to be on the earth." When talking with her friends she may "discuss needlework and household management, discipline and embroidery. If she does not know something, she may ask the advice of a good woman, speaking politely and sweetly." Finally, "having returned home, she tells her husband all she has learned, to bring repose to his soul."

In describing the responsibilities and duties of women, the two texts again are almost identical. St. John Chrysostom wrote:

A wife has only one duty, to preserve what we have gathered, to protect our income, to take care of our household. After all, God gave her to us for this purpose, to help in these matters… She can free her husband from all cares and worries for the house… She takes care of all the other matters which it is not fitting or easy for a man to undertake no matter how competitive he might be.

According to this passage, the wife's responsibilities include weaving, management and discipline of household servants, raising the children, tending the store-rooms, preparing meals and maintaining clothing. The Domostroi also goes into detail on these subjects. "Everyday, the mistress should oversee her servants, those who bake, cook and engage in every kind of craft… if someone works badly, disobeys orders, is lazy, incompetent… the mistress of the house must correct her." There is a very detailed section on the care of clothing that advises, among other things, "Take care of the dresses, shifts, and kerchiefs you wear every day. Do not scatter your clothes about; do not let them smell musty; do not wrinkle them or drop them in dirt or water."

Along with advice on everything from the maintenance of cooking pots and dishes to the brewing of beer, the Domostroi gives explicit instructions on how to go about beating a disobedient wife, child or servant, and the situations in which such action is called for:

The wife should supervise … and should teach her servants and children in goodly and valiant fashion. If someone fails to head her scoldings she must strike him. If the husband sees something amiss for which his wife or her servants are responsible… he should reason with his wife and correct her.
But if your wife does not live according to this teaching…then the husband should punish his wife. Beat her when you are alone together; then forgive her and remonstrate with her. But when you beat her, do not do it in hatred… A husband must never get angry with his wife; a wife must live with her husband in love and purity of heart.
You should discipline servants and children the same way.

While it can be proved that Orthodoxy had its greatest impact among the gentry, that is in no way to imply that it lacked all influence on the common family or even that the old pagan beliefs dominated. Quite the opposite. The influence was simply slower in taking root, the outward indications of faith being more readily accepted and applied. Church attendance and public worship were indeed the norm, as history is wont to tell us. But this faith was superficial and in many area was practiced solely because it was enforced by the powerful institution, a fact that was systematically denied and hidden. History more often than not tells us about powerful public figures, military leaders and campaigns, and the rulers of church and state, at the expense of the more telling history of the common people. That is precisely the case here, where most of the historical texts were written by monks and clergymen, and showed their faith in the best possible light. The true history of Russia, of its common families and of its customary laws, is only beginning to emerge.

As a final illustration, although the church forbade divorce except in cases of adultery on the part of the wife, and even then discouraged it, through the sixteenth century, among the Russian peasants, divorce was as simple as appearing before the village council and declaring the intention, and contrary to church doctrine, a custom was in place whereby the clergy could be called upon to dissolve the bonds of marriage. This was often done for no other reason than the incompatibility of the couple.

History and common wisdom would have us believe that the Russian Orthodox church was the most powerful and influential force in the early evolution of the Russian state, and perhaps that is true, for it did in fact exert a strong influence on the leaders and decision makers of the nation. But that is only a partial picture, a distortion. There is another side to the story, more complex and through the centuries hidden from view, much of it unfortunately lost, and for the sole reason that the early historical texts were generally written by monks and members of the clergy and whatever truths may have been present in them were distorted through the lens of their religion, in spite of the prevailing customs and beliefs of the time. And while this is true in many areas, it is perhaps most applicable to the family, for family concerns were not matters for public discussion. What is hidden is generally forgotten, and indeed, the common law of the Russian peasants has been through the ages forgotten, neglected and ignored, but there is a great deal to be learned from exploration of this important subject, for more so even than what history texts would call the greatest leader, a nation is shaped by the common man.



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