"whose wife will she be at the resurrection?" Marriage and remarriage in early modern Russia

Slavic Review

Volumn 62, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 302-321

  Kaiser, Daniel H ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949367016     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3185579     Document Type: Article

References (122)

1. Georg Michels, At War with the Church: Religious Dissent in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Stanford, 1999), 188-89.
2. P. S. Stefanovich, Prikhod i prikhodskoe dukhovenslvo v Rossii v XVI-XVII vekakh (Moscow, 2002), 282.
3. D. Kaizcr (Kaiser), "Vozrast pri brake i raznitsa v vozraste suprugov v gorodakh Rossii v nachale XVIII v.," in Sosloviia i gosudarstvennaia vlast' v Rossii XV-seredina XIX vv., 2 vols. (Moscow, 1994), 2:227-32.
4. Daniel H. Kaiser, "The Seasonality of Family Life in Early Modern Russia," Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 46 (1992): 30-39;
5. Kaiser, "Quotidian Orthodoxy: Domestic Life in Early Modern Russia," in Valerie A. Kivelson and Robert H. Greene, eds., Orthodox Russia: Belief and Practice under the Tsars and Beyond (University Park, 2003), 179-92.
6. -.5. Kaiser, "Seasonality," 22-30.
7. Daniel H. Kaiser, "Naming Cultures in Early Modern Russia," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19 (1995): 271-95.
8. Gregory L. Freeze, "Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760-1860,"Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 711.
9. Ibid., Gregory L. Freeze, "Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760-1860,"Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 725.
10. Ibid., Gregory L. Freeze, "Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760-1860,"Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 711.
11. Ibid., Gregory L. Freeze, "Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760-1860,"Journal of Modern History 62 (1990): 712-13.
12. Freeze makes the same point in "The Wages of Sin: The Decline of Public Penance in Imperial Russia," in Stephen K. Batalden, ed., Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia (DeKalb, 1993), 55.
13. See, for example, N. P. Rozanov, "Semeinye bezobraziia bylago vremeni," Rus-skii arkhiv, 1894, bk. 3:319-21, 327-28.
14. Nina Minenko reports that in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century western Siberia "peasants did not regard marriage as a 'permanent union'" and that peasant flight and remarriage were common. As the records she cites confirm, however, churchmen regularly investigated complaints about bigamy and attempted to restore partners to their original marriages. N. A. Minenko, Russkaia krest'ianskaia sem'ia v zapadnoi Sibiri: XVlll-pervoi poloviny XIX v. (Novosibirsk, 1979),210-13.
15. I know of no complete inventory of such records, but it is clear that similar materials exist for Moscow and other central Russian eparchies. See T. N. Protas'eva, "Stolbtsy Sinodal'nogo sobraniia," Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1959 god (Moscow, 1960), 297.
16. Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 (Ithaca, 1989), 105.
17. On the conflicted history of western canonists' views on remarriage, see James A. Brundage, "Widows and Remarriage: Moral Conflicts and Their Resolution in Classical Canon Law," in Sue Sheridan Walker, ed., Wife and Widow in Medieval England (Ann Arbor, 1993), 17-31.
18. Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka (hereafter RIB), 39 vols. (St. Petersburg-Leningrad, 1872-1927), 6:4.6.
19. N. L. Pushkareva, ed., "A se grekhi zlye smerlnye-": Liubov', erotika i seksual'naia etika v doindustrial'noi Rossii. X-pervaia polovina XIXv.: Teksty, issledovaniia (Moscow, 1999), 54;
20. S. I. Smirnov, Materialy po istorii drevnerusskoi pokaiannoi distsipliny (Moscow, 1913), 64;
21. Levin, Sex and Society, 106.
22. See also Matt. 19:3-6.
23. RIB 6:867-68.59.
24. Ibid.,RIB 6:867-68.9.17,859.13.
25. Ibid.,RIB 6:273, 282;
26. Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh Rossiiskoi imperii Arkheo-graficheskoiu ekispeditsieiu Imperatorskoi Akademii nauh, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1836), 1, no. 369; Russkii feodal'nyi arkhiv, 5 vols. (Moscow, 1986-92), 3, no. 141 and 2, no. 126.
27. RIB 6:273, 279-81.
28. Akty istoricheskie, sobrannye i izdannye Arkheograficheshoiu komissieiu, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1841-43), 1, no. 109. Exactly that fate befell a late seventeenth-century priest who petitioned the archbishop about having presided over the wedding of a peasant whose bride became his fourth wife. According to the priest, parishioners had taken from him the keys to the church and had refused him entry because of his error
29. Ivan Nikolaevich Suvorov, Opisanie sobraniia svitkov nakhodiashchikhsia v Vologodskom eparkhial' nom drevnekhranilishche, 13 pts. (Vologda, 1899-1917), 5:25.
30. See also ibid.,Ivan Nikolaevich Suvorov, Opisanie sobraniia svitkov nakhodiashchikhsia v Vologodskom eparkhial' nom drevnekhranilishche,1899-1917, 1:27, 12:18-19.
31. Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (hereafter PSZ), 45 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1830), 3, no. 1612, arts. 64, 46.
32. Although churchmen long sought to collect wedding fees (venechnye poshliny), exactly when the document authorizing a wedding (venechnaia pamial') came into practice is uncertain. S. I. Sirotkin reported that the earliest reference dated to 1488, but few survive from anytime before the seventeenth century. "Neskol'ko novykh dokumentov po istorii brachnogo prava na Rusi za XVII-XVIII vv.," Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri moskovskom universitete, 1896, no. 4,41
33. A 1630 wedding memorandum appears in Akty iuridicheskie ili sobranie form starinnogo deloproizvodstva (St. Petersburg, 1838), no. 403, and is reprinted in RIB 35, no. 375. Many more survive from late in the seventeenth century.
34. See, for example, Pamiatniki pis'mennosti v muzeiakh Vologodskoi oblasti. Katalog-putevoditet', pt. 4, no. 2 (Vologda, 1984), 107-13.
35. Ia. N. Shchapov, ed., Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy XI-XV vv. (Moscow, 1976), 87.9-10, 92.6-7, 95.10-11, 100.10-11, 104.10-11.
36. The Short, Rumiantsev, and Tarnovsk redactions do not include the article that imagines a woman committing bigamy. Ibid., Drevnerusskie kniazheskie ustavy XI-XV vv, 1976, 111.9,117.9,122.9, 129.9,133.9.
37. In fairness to early modern Russians, their twentieth-century descendants could be every bit as ambitious in multiplying marital alliances. During the 1936 public discussion of the proposed new Soviet constitution, Maria Stepanovna Khudiakova of Cheliabinsk wrote to the newspaper Krest'ianskaia gazela to complain about her own husband's misbehavior. She wrote that her husband had been "married to two other women besides me and they had one child apiece, I found out too late-I was already pregnant, and now he has gotten himself a fourth one and taken off." Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov,Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents (New Haven, 2000), 198-99.
38. Pushkareva, ed., "A se grekhi dye smertnye-," 97;
39. Smirnov, Materialy; 47. The text did not articulate a similar provision for a man who acted equally precipitously.
40. PSZ 3, no. 1612, art. 63.
41. Pushkareva, ed., "A se grekhi zlye smertnye-," 97;
42. Smirnov, Materialy, 48, 49. Orthodox priests, whom canon law and tradition required to be married, encountered special difficulties after the death of a spouse.
43. See Debra Coulter, "The Muscovite Widowed Clergy and the Russian Church Reforms of 1666-1667," Slavonic and East European Review 80, no. 3 (July 2002): 459-78.
44. Stoglav, intro. W. F. Ryan (Letchworth, 1971), 85;
45. E. B. Emchenko, Stoglav: Issledovanie i tekst (Moscow, 2000), 283.
46. Stoglav, 87;
47. Emchenko, Stoglav, 284.
48. Pushkareva, ed., "A se grekhi zlye smertnye-,"51;
49. Smirnov, Materialy, 61.
50. Pushkareva, ed., "A se grekhi zlye smertnye-, "53;
51. Smirnov, Materialy, 63.
52. On the origins of this text, see R. G. Pikhoia, "Opyt izucheniia rannikh novgorodskikh pamiatnikov tserkovnogo prava (Pravilo 'Asche dvoezhenets' i Voproshanie Kirikovo)," Vspomogatel'nye istoricheskie distsipliny. Sbornik 1 (Sverdlovsk, 1974), 9-16.
53. Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka, otdel rukopisei, f. 173.Ill (Moskovskaia dukhovnaia akademiia), no. 108, fols. 27-27v.
54. Aleksei Dmitrievskii, Bogosluzhenie v russkoi tserkvi v XVIveke (Kazan', 1884), 404.
55. N. Odintsov, Poriadok obshchestvennogo i chastnogo bogosluzheniia v drevnei Rossii do XVI veka (St. Petersburg, 1881), 283-84;
56. Dmitrievskii, Bogosluzhenie, 405.
57. R. H. Major, ed., Notes upon Russia, 2 vols. (New York, n.d.), 1:93.
58. Puteshestvie v Moskoviiu Barona Avgustina Maierberga, in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshcheslve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri moskovskom universitete, 1873, no. 3:83.
59. Mayerberg went on to report, however, that divorce was common among the nobility, for whom barrenness proved sufficient reason to dissolve marriages and remarry, he claimed. Ibid. Puteshestvie v Moskoviiu Barona Avgustina Maierberga, in Chteniia v Imperatorskom obshcheslve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri moskovskom universitete, 1873, no. 3:83.
60. John [Jan] Struys, The Perillous and Most Unhappy Voyages of John Struys through Italy, Greece, Lifeland, Moscovia, Tartary ..., trans. John Morrison (London, 1683), 146.
61. Martine Segalen, Historical Anthropology of the Family, trans. J. C. Whitehouse and Sarah Matthews (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), 32.
62. N. N. Kashkin, "Iz arkhiva Kashkinykh," Izvestiia Kaluzkskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii, 1903, 15-16.
63. See, among others, S. G. Helmfelt to Bengt Horn, Narva, 15 September 1671 (enclosure Moscow, 29 August);
64. -.17 May 1672 (enclosure Novgorod, 6 May);
65. and 24 May 1672 (enclosure Moscow, 7 May), Bengt Horns Samlung, vol. 11, Riksarkivet, Stockholm.
66. See also Muscovitica, vol. 89, p. 99 (8 January 1674), Riksarkivet, Stockholm. My thanks to Martha Lahana for sharing this material with me.
67. "Povest' o Savve Grudtsyne," in Pamiatniki literalury Drevnei Rusi. XVII vek. Kniga pervaia (Moscow, 1988), 40;
68. Serge Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles and Tales, rev. ed. (New York, 1974), 455.
69. D. Gaunt and O. Löfgren, "Remarriage in the Nordic Countries: The Cultural and Socio-Economic Background," in J. Dupâquier and E. Hélin et al., eds., Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past (London, 1981), 55: "It is striking that remarriage was less frequent among the nobility and the clergy than among the peasants."
70. Arkhiv Sanktpeterburgskogo instituta rossiiskoi istorii (hereafter Arkhiv SpblRI), koll. 117 (Collection of P. I. Savvaitov, Documents of the Vologda Archbishopric), op. 1, no. 1992.
71. Suvorov, Opisanie, 12:234.
72. Similarly, Iakimka Ivanov reported that his wife, having grown ill, took the veil. Ivanov, now thirty, noted that he had been married twice already and petitioned for permission to take a third wife. Church authorities approved his request, so long as there was no other obstacle to his remarrying. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 5:79.
73. Arkhiv SpblRI, koll. 117, op. 1, no. 1910. There is reason to doubt whether seventeenth-century petitioners were well informed about their exact ages.
74. See Daniel H. Kaiser and Peyton Engel, "Time- and Age-Awareness in Early Modern Russia," Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (1993): 824-39.
75. Suvorov, Opisanie, 7:105-7. Jennifer Lee Anderson cites a 1687 case that came before the Krudtsk archbishop, according to which a priest was denied permission to marry a man who contemplated his fourth marriage. See Anderson, "Gender Role Construction, Morality and Social Norms in Early Modern Russia" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 2001), 123. Yet Nina Minenko points out that in western Siberia peasants managed to marry four times at least occasionally, although with what consequences she does not say.
76. Minenko, Russkaia krest'ianskaia sem'ia, 216-17.
77. Suvorov, Opisanie, 9:2-3.
78. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 9:129.
79. German authorities confronted similar cases, often meting out harsh punishments for wives who did not remain chaste during the absence of runaway husbands. Ulinka Rublack, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford, 1999), 214-15.
80. Gaunt and Löfgren, "Remarriage in the Nordic Countries," 51.
81. Arkhiv SpblRI, koll. 117, op. 1, no. 2086.
82. Suvorov, Opisanie, 11:104.
83. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 12:234.
84. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 1:41.
85. See also a listing of similar cases from the 1630s: ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 2:4.
86. Arkhiv SpblRI, koll. 117, op. 1, no. 2115.
87. Suvorov, Opisanie, 5:57.
88. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 10:64-66.
89. Arkhiv SpblRI, koll. 117, op. 1, no. 1179.
90. P. I. Shchukin, Sbornik starinnykh bumag khraniashchiesia v muzee P. I. Shchukina, 10 vols. (Moscow, 1896-1902), 4:53-55.
91. Eve Levin discusses this case as well; see her Sex and Society, 125.
92. Suvorov, Opisanie, 12:1
93. -.10. Anderson reports on several similar cases drawn from the archive of the Ustiug Archbishopric; see her "Gender Role Construction," 121-22.
94. RIB 12, no. 180.
95. Ibid. RIB 12, no. 180.
96. As Anderson pointed out in discussing this case, the husband might have divorced his wife for her adultery; see her "Gender Role Construction," 100.
97. Arkhiv SpblRI, koll. 117, op. 1, no. 507.
98. Ibid., no. 292.
99. New spouses did not always prove amenable to these decisions, however, as a 1704 case provesSee Suvorov, Opisanie, 7:139-40.
100. Suvorov, Opisanie, 10:102-9.
101. V. Iu. Leshcheko refers to the canons of Basil the Great in claiming that in the early eighteenth century Russian churchmen regularly returned to First marriages those who had illegally remarried. Leshchcnko, Sem'ia i russkoe pravoslavie: XI-XIXvv. (St. Petersburg, 1999), 161-63.
102. Shchukin, Sbornik, 4:79.
103. Suvorov, Opisanie, 10:112-13.
104. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 10:29-30.
105. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 7:123. Nada Boškovska and Boris Morozov, in introducing a 1687 divorce memorandum from Nikifor Larionov syn Islen'cv, report that only three such emancipation memoranda survive from the seventeenth century, but the cases cited here are far from rare;
106. see "Razvodnaia zapis' XVII veka," Rodina, 1992, no. 10:95. Leshchenko describes a 1716 case, according to which the peasant Ivan Afanas'ev returned home from military duty to discover that his wife had married another man six years before. The two men agreed to a cash settlement (two rubles and four buckets of wine), in return for which Afanas'ev abandoned all claims to the woman and promised not to petition the authorities for her return;
107. see Leshchenko, Sem'ia, 161-62. According to Minenko, in the early eighteenth century in western Siberia, peasants sometimes accepted significant sums from other men to issue such releases so that their wives could remarry;
108. see Minenko, Russkaia krest'ianskaia sem'ia, 215-16.
109. Arkhiv SpblRI, koll. 117, op. 1, no. 2227 (on reverse of the folios).
110. Ibid., no. 1911.
111. Ibid., no. 281.
112. Suvorov, Opisanie, 1:39.
113. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 1:32.
114. On the frequency of epilepsy and other ailments in early modern Russia, see Daniel H. Kaiser, "The Poor and Disabled in Early Eighteenth-Century Russian Towns," Journal of Social History 32 (1998-99): 131-34.
115. Suvorov, Opisanie, 11:126-29. Mental illness informed other suits, as well. In one case a Vologda townsman claimed that his wife had fled from him on account of mental deficiencies (po maloumiiu), and in another a slaveowner reported that the wife of a household servant had fled because she was out of her mind (vne uma);
116. he wanted to have the servant remarry. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 2:45, 11:134.
117. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 9:18-23. In a case from The 1650s, the wife of townsman Ivashka Filippov requested permission to take the veil, threatening to kill herself if her request were not granted.
118. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 1:6.
119. Arkhiv SpblRI, koll. 117, op. 1, no. 365. For a similar, much longer case involving a dispute about whether the woman had deserted husband and children for a monastic vocation
120. see Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov, f. 210 (Military Affairs Chancellery), d. 226, Prikaznyi stol., fols. 1-52 and d. 238, fols. 1-19, 60-61.
121. Suvorov, Opisanie, 11:31.
122. Ibid., Suvorov, Opisanie, 7:85-86.