The Authority of Holiness: Women Ascetics and Spiritual Elders in Nineteenth-century Russia

Abstract

Although much has been written about the role of the starets (spiritual elder) in nineteenth-century Russian Orthodoxy, and Dostoevsky has made Father Zossima known to us all, the staritsa has remained a shrouded figure. Indeed, the existence and significance of holy women in general in pre-revolutionary Russia is seldom remarked upon in our scholarly literature. And yet popular religious and edificatory journals and hagiographic collections of the nineteenth and early twentieth century frequently noted the exemplary importance of such women. The fourteen volume Zhizneopisaniia otechestvennykh podvizhnikov blagochestiia 18 i 19 vekov, for example, although using the masculine podvizhnikov in its title, in fact included a significant number of women, with 17 per cent (104/609) of the ascetics and spiritual models included in the collection being women.¹ They are often vividly and succinctly known by the virtues and deeds they practised, such as ‘Vera the Silent’, ‘Servant of God Tatiana’, ‘The Church Builder Paraskeva’, ‘The Ustiug Holy Fool Pelagiia Andreevna Berezina’, ‘The Sufferer Katen’ka Lezhanka’, ‘Blessed Mariia, the Belogorskaia cave digger’, ‘The pious staritsa Paraskeva Alekseevna Mukhanova, benefactress’, ‘Blessed Melaniia, the Eletskaia hermit’, and ‘Matrona Naumovna Popova, founder of the first hospice in the town of Zadonsk’.² The collection is thus a rich historical source combining the timelessness of hagiographic convention and the specificity of modern factuality.