Parish and Church building of NorthWestern Russia in 16-18 cc.

The main idea of the project is to consider a wide picture of rural church building in North-Western parts of Russia. The region selected • Novgorod and Pscov Lands, Bezetsky Verch, The Velikie Luki, the Novy Torg and the Toropets districts • were joined to Moscow state at the late 15th • early 16th cc. At the same time before the joining those territories have been in different cultural conditions. Some of them were more or less independent subcultures; strong neighbors • Moscow and Lithuania, influenced others. That circumstance determines the main trait of the project • its comparative character.

The chronological limits of the project: 16th • 18th cc. depend of such case. The 16th century is a time which the main sources • record books • belong to. At the same time the 16th c. is a period of the beginning of Moscow subculture spreading to the North-Western territories. It is also the beginning of the Moscow church structure unification. The 18th c. is finishing our project because for that century local particulars of North-West were totally eliminated and in the next 19th c. the parish system was regular on the whole territory of empire.

The main objectives of the project are:

• To regard the process of church and parish building of North-Western Russia as a factor influenced the rural settling. The specifics of North-Western Russia, its isolation from the central parts of Moscow State determined the character of rural settling. The most specific event in this case is the pogost division. Pogost in Novgorod and Pscov Lands in the first years after joining to Moscow are immediately an administrative, fiscal, court and parish center. In the very first years after joining pogost became also a record unit. The process of making this system belongs to pre-Moscow time, possibly • to 14^th-15^th cc. But originally pogost appears as a parish unit and its appearing is sure connects with the building of a church. We are looking for the roots of appearing of the pogost system, which are connected with the roots of the Christianization of the Russian North-West. In 16^th-18^th cc. the combination of different pogost?tm)s function disappear. One of the main reasons for in is the influence of Moscow subculture. May be the looking for the roots of North-Western pogost are a main aim of our project.
• To trace the determinants of Novgorod and Pscov rural churches dedications in the context of connections with neighbor regions of different subculture (Lithuania, Moscow). After joining Moscow State the spread of the Moscow subculture natives to North-West appeared. Those natives were gentlemen, landowners • “dvoryane” and “dety boyarskie” • czar?tm)s warriors and officials who took land in the joined regions. Little later such gentlemen took lands in Toropets district that former belong to Lithuania. Earlier, in 15^th c. the spread of Moscowians to Novy Torg and Bezetsky Verch began. We had already considered the picture of rural altar dedication in some local regions of Novgorod Land after 1500. Our considerations shows that about this time new cults have spread to Novgorod Land • the cult of Trinity, of Paraskeva-Pyatnitsa, etc. The record books have told us that it was landowner that initiated those churches and altars to build. Just the landowners determined the dedication of altar they built. It is interesting to compare how have the dedications spread depending of the time of joining to Moscow and of a power of influence of another powerful Orthodox center • Lithuania.
• To determine how did the making of rural parish?tm)s progress in different regions of North-Western Russia. Our preliminary considerations shows that in the middle 16^th c. in Novgorod and maybe in Pscov Land a great scale process of the building of new churches have been progressing. New churches were built, the new altar were added to old churches. In the same time the old system of pogosts-parishes became to collapse and new parishes with the centers in large villages • residences of landowners • becomes smaller. Finally the old pre-Moscow pogost system collapsed after the Time of Troubles 1605-1618. when the main part of rural churches had been destroyed. Our task is to trace the history and the particulars of each of the North-Western parish (number about 1500) from the appearing till the end of 18^th c.
• To consider the process of making a social group of rural church attendants as one of possible sources for Russian middle class forming in the 18^th c. In this case we need to look for the fate of each church attendant of 16^th • 18^th cc., where it is possible. The study of social group of rural clergy is an important part of the project. There are two opinions in native historiography on this theme. Some historians told that all the priests were elected ones and the peasants elected them. Others said that the priests had inherited their positions from the most ancient time, and from the early Middle Ages there had been a closed caste of clergy. Our opinion is that there were priest elections but the bishops were to establish them. Meanwhile the close character of clergy social group becomes only from the beginning of 18^th c. (from the Peter the Great's reforms). Russian rural clergy was little investigated at all. We know very few about it. Very often some researchers (P.Bushkovitch, etc) considers the history of Russian medieval church as a history of spiritual movements only, distinguishing the monuments of monastic thought (P.Bushkovitch  wrote that rural clergy (“white clergy”) was practically “nameless”). One of our tasks is to return the names to this clergy back. Just this social group, not differed greatly from the peasants in its everyday life, played a very significant role in the life of rural community because of its total literacy. The beginnings of enlightenment in Russian countryside are connected just with this group. This group was maximally mobile, especially in 1500 • 1620. Then the changes that begun in the Romanovs?tm) reign conserved that social level of rural clergy. In the 17^th c. the initiators of Schisma came just from this stock, in the 18^th c. the sectarians appears also among the junior clergy and in 19^th c. a great number of Russian revolutionaries, terrorists also came from the clergy stock.

The main sources of the project are record books. Just in that books one could find the earliest data on the church building. A very small part of record books were published in the 19^th • the beginning of 20^th cc. The great number of them is in the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novgorod, and Pscov. Also the other deeds especially connected with landownership is to be used. This material is very important for the revealing rural clergy. The taking part in each rural deed was necessary for clergy until the 19^th c. Practically each local deed has a signature of priest and was written by church official.

The first stage of the project is creating databases on church and clergy of North-Western Russia according to the archive and published data. The database will be composed in the form of electronic card index of local churches of Russian North-West including the materials about clergy (names, years of serving, circumstances of life). At the present time I have created such database for 100 churches of Vodskaya pyatina (totally we suppose to study 1500 churches of North-West).

The next stage is the statistical processing of information including: the revealing main tends of church dedication, geographical spread of churches and parishes, the dimensions of parishes, genealogy of clergy, family ties between them. This stage also includes the cartographying of the received data. It is clear that we are to compare not only large regions with each other but also local microregions. I suppose that we are to create a number of “map-cuttings” for it. We should use raster copies of Geoinformatic database from the CD-ROM “Россия. 1000 карт” (1000 maps of Russia). СПб., “Ингит”, 1997. The maps and plans of General Land Survey of 18^th c. are also very important for creating those maps. These materials let us to reveal the churches lost in the Time of Troubles in the beginning of 17^th c.

The comparison of the results of different regions of Russian North-West is the last stage of our project. I suppose to separate the regions with maximal concentration of churches, regions with stable number of churches during all the period and regions with parish system collapsed. The determination of the time of strict succession of church positions by the relatives (was it before Peter the Great?tm)s reforms or earlier) is also a significant aspect of the results.

Significance, Dissemination: The problem state in the project has not been lightened in native historiography since 1900. This theme is practically forgotten and is not included into University course “Church history”, etc. Probably publication of the results or as a series of articles either an atlas could create a serious methodic basis for creation of new course “Russian Church history”. Such a publication is possible with the drawing interest from municipal administration on the basis of the Center for Studying Russian Rural Culture at the St. Petersburg Brunch of Russian Research Institute for Cultural and Natural Heritage.

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