Monastery Prisons: The History of Monasteries as Prisons, the Inmates Incarcerated There, Religiou

By Daniel H. Shubin

Little is known regarding prisons located inside Russian Orthodox Monasteries for the incarceration of religious dissenters and sectarians, political activists and criminals. This book focuses on the history of such a prison system and the lives and convictions of the inmates subject to incarceration by Imperial Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. The period covered begins 1441, with the arrival of Isidore, the metropolitan of Moscow, to the Moscow Chudov (Miracles) Monastery for incarceration, and ends 1905, when the final inmates were released from the Suzdal Spasso-Evfimiev Monastery, coincident with the edict of religious toleration of Tsar Nicholas II. Likewise included are the women incarcerated in convents over the same period. This is a part of history that is unknown to the non-Russian speaking world and which the author hopes to unveil. With 11 photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 14, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462837687

Daniel H. Shubin

25 years lay-minister and Bible teacher in southern California. Author of over 100 articles on the Bible and its application to contemporary issues. Previously translated from Russian and published 5 books on religion in Russia. Peace activist and author of 1 book on the Biblical basis of non-violence and pacifism.

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Copyright © 2001 by Daniel H. Shubin.

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Cover Photo: South Wall of Solovetski Monastery All Photos by the author.

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Contents

1 - PREFACE

2 - MONASTERY PRISONS

3 - SOLOVETSKI ISLAND MONASTERY

4 - SOLOVETSKI MONASTERY INMATES

5 - SUZDAL SPASSO-EVFIMIEV MONASTERY

6 SPASSO-EVFIMIEV MONASTERY INMATES

7 - LESSER MONASTERIES AND THEIR INMATES

8 - CONVENTS AND THEIR INMATES

9 - EPILOGUE

ENDNOTES

This book is dedicated to all the innocent victims of incarceration in a monastery

prison, those whose names are in this book and those whose names are lost in

history, none of whom should have been subjected to such trial of body and mind

and conscience.

1 - PREFACE

1

Little is known regarding prisons located inside Russian Orthodox monasteries for the incarceration and persecution of religious dissenters and sectarians, political activists, and criminals. This book focuses on the history of such prisons and the lives of the inmates subject to monastery incarceration by Imperial Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. The period covered begins 1441, with the arrival of Isidore, the metropolitan of Moscow, to the Moscow Chudov Monastery for incarceration, and ends 1905, when the final inmates were released from the Suzdal Spasso-Evfimiev Monastery, coincident with the edict of religious toleration of Tsar Nicholas II. Likewise included are the women incarcerated in convents over the same period. This is a part of history that is unknown to the non-Russian speaking world, and which the author hopes to unveil. The inmates recorded in this book are only a fraction of the total number, the names of all the others long erased from history or having passed into oblivion due to lack of information at the present time. Of the 400 that were incarcerated at Spasso-Evfimiev during its history of monastery incarceration, for example, only about 50 names are presently available.

In this book the author will bring to the knowledge of readers the sorrowful and somber anomaly which permeated the Russian state-church life from the medieval eras of religious persecution and intolerance. It is to remember the fate of those known as monastery prisoners, that is, those individuals having the misfortune due to violations of one type or another against the church and religion, or against the political institution of Imperial Russia, to be incarcerated in a monastery prison. The vast majority were innocent of any crime; this author estimates at least 90% of the inmates had no crime to speak of to incur the type of punishment allotted them at a monastery prison.

The prison and inmates at Solovetski Monastery (Solovki, for short) is covered primarily because extensive information is available regarding it, and then the Spasso-Evfimiev monastery of Suzdal. Information on other monasteries and convents having prison facilities is meager, but as much as available is included in this book. There are many more monasteries in Russia having prison facilities other than those investigated here, but the records of them and their inmates have long been suppressed by the Orthodoxy, and access to them is impossible. The Orthodox church in Russia at present is toiling to erase its history of persecution of dissenters and sectarians.

Many religious dissenters and sectarians and political activists were incarcerated in state or local prisons and jails, and were exiled to remote cities and areas, especially the thousands of innocent victims of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. Many of them perished by execution and under conditions of extreme torture, of which much historical record survives, but all of this is outside the scope of this book. The identities of almost all of the victims of Ivan the Terrible, those who filled the monasteries of northern Russia and Siberia, are long lost in history.

There are 2 state prisons which should be mentioned since they served as temporary incarceration for many of the inmates recorded in this volume. The first is the Petro-Pavlovsk, or Peter and Paul, fortress. This fortress is located on Hare Island at the mouth of the Neva River. Construction of the fortress began by Peter the Great on May 16, 1703 as the defense of St. Petersburg against enemies arriving via the Gulf of Finland. The second is Schlesselburg prison. This prison was located on Noteborg Island (or Oreshka in Russia, meaning hazelnut). The island is located in the Neva River near Lake Ladoga, about 40 miles east of St. Petersburg. The original fortress was constructed by the residents of Novgorod in the 14th century, but later as time progressed the Schlesselburg fortress increased in size and a prison was built inside its walls, and which served as the largest and most secure state prison in Imperial Russia.

2

There exists an underlying and parallel history with that of monastery prisons in this volume. It is the history of the search for Christian truth in the midst of an era of religious intolerance and the attempt to improve society by peaceful political advancement during a time of political intolerance. Throughout this volume and between its lines is the history of the steadfast conviction of dedicated and sincere individuals. They believed in what they professed and practiced and which was so valuable to them that they were willing to endure the most brutal of torture or execution by penal maltreatment. Unwilling to compromise with their conscience, they survived the exclusion of themselves from society to the end of their life without capitulating to the religious and political control of others. It was a trial and ordeal that they triumphed over.

Others however, and on a regular basis, after facing the physical and psychological maltreatment destined them for their convictions, would conclude that personal freedom was more important than the sacrifice of themselves for some religious or political ideal or conviction. They either did not have the stamina to become martyrs, lost the support of supporters and adherents once incarcerated, or else realized that their beliefs were not as important as they originally felt. These eventually capitulated to the demands of the religious authorities and were able to gain their release.

3

The bulk of this book is the translation and paraphrase of portions of 4 books written on this subject in Russian, along with several secondary sources, and which is interwoven with commentary by the author. These 4 are the only known volumes that deal specifically with the subject of monastery prisons published in Russia. They are:

Prugavin, Aleksandr Stepanovich, Monastirski Turmi (Monastery Prisons), Moscow, 1905.

Kolchin, Mikhail Andreyevich, Ssilniye i Zatochyoniye v Ostrog Solovetskago Monastirya (Exiles and Prisoners of the Prison of Solovetski Monastery), Moscow, 1908.

Frumenkov, Grigori Grigoryevich, Uzniki Solovetskago Monastirya (Inmates of Solovetski Monastery), Archangel, 1970.

Gernet, Mikhail Nikolaevich, Istoriya Tsarskoi Turmi (History of the Tsar’s Prisons), 5 volumes, Moscow, 1941-1954.

All of these men had their personal reasons for the study of monastery prisons and the publication of a book dealing with this topic.

Prugavin, born in 1850, was a civil and religious rights activist. He wrote profusely about the suppression of minority religious groups by the Orthodoxy and Tsarist regime. He published several other books dealing with the dissenters (raskolniki) of Orthodoxy, the sectarians, and the corruption of the Russian judicial and penal system. His book Monastirski Turmi dealt with all of the monasteries used in Russia for prisons, and he visited many of them personally and interviewed inmates while they were incarcerated in their monastery prison cells, especially those at Spasso-Evfimiev. Prugavin died in 1920.

Kolchin was born in Archangel province, the son of a poor village priest in Kholmogorsk county, about 150 miles south of Archangel. His initial education was at the Archangel Religious Seminary. In the early 1870’s, while attending the seminary, Kolchin with his friends began to publish a magazine dealing with the improvement of life among the poor of Russia. Their views conflicted with those of the priests. He and his friends were immediately expelled from the seminary. With plans of becoming a writer, Kolchin was motivated by political exiles living in the Archangel area to move to St. Petersburg, and so he did. He was able to find work as a reporter for Otchestvinnikh Zapissok (Fatherland Sketches), and was assigned to medical news and events. His interest in the medical field increased, and Kolchin took some courses dealing with medicine. He also joined a group of men who were suspected of being radicals. In 1876, Kolchin was arrested and sent back to Archangel province as a political exile. To avoid the greater of evils, he applied for the vacant position of assistant surgeon, using his experience in medical reporting and the classes he took in St. Petersburg. He was assigned to Solovetski, and lived at the monastery in the servants’ quarters the entirety of 3 years.

After his release from exile, Kolchin was unable to further himself in the medical field due to the constant surveillance by the police. He acquired a job in a government office in Archangel province. He married and raised his family in the area. Prugavin and Kolchin became friends in later years. Were it not for the efforts of the writers Prugavin and Kolchin the history of monasteries as prisons would probably long have passed into oblivion.

Spending much time at Solovetski monastery Kolchin became personally acquainted and familiar with the plight of the inmates, the specific conditions of their incarceration and regimen, and the life of the monks and others living there. Kolchin also had access to the ancient archives and contemporary records located at the monastery, more than Prugavin had, which allowed him to compose a history of the monastery prison, its regimen and inmates. Kolchin died in August of 1906, 2 years before the publication of his book.

Little is known about G. G. Frumenkov, but he appears to have been a resident of the Russian north-west. Because his book was written in 1970, he was already distant from the prison regimen of Imperial Russia. By 1970, Solovetski was abandoned, unoccupied and desolate. The information that Frumenkov utilized for his book were the archives of the Holy Synod, State Senate, the Chancellery, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and those of Solovetski Monastery, all located in St. Petersburg. In his book, he quotes profusely from both Prugavin and Kolchin. But because he had access to the legal documents of both the political and religious exiles, Frumenkov’s book is far more detailed than the other 2 in regard to dates, places, reasons for arrest, trial proceedings, terms of exile and demise of the inmates.

Mikhail Nikolaevich Gernet wrote a 5 volume history on criminal justice and prisons that is considered a classic. He was born July 12, 1874. His father was incarcerated in Schlesselburg prison as an accomplice in the attempted assassination of Tsar Aleksandr II on April 4, 1866, by Dimitri Vla. Karakoz. After his release from Schlesselburg, the father was exiled to Vologda in north-east Russia for some time.

Gernet was the head of the Department of Criminal Law at Moscow University beginning 1919. Gernet’s 5 volume history spans the period from 1762 to 1917, and deals with criminal justice in Imperial Russia, and especially the construction of the Schlesselburg and Petro-Pavlovsk fortress-prisons in St. Petersburg, and its inmates. His information on monastery prisons is meager but very valuable. Gernet died in 1953.

Secondary Russian sources for information on monastery prisons and their inmates are the following: the massive 4 volume Istorii Russkoi Tserkvi by E. E. Golubinski; the 2 volume Istorii Russkoi Tserkvi by H. Talberg; Rasskazi iz Istorii Russkoi Tserkvi, by Count Mikhael Vl. Tolstoi; the 5 volume Raskolniki I Ostrozhniki, by Feodor Vasilich Livanov, 1871-1875; and the 2 volume Ochertki po Istorii Russkoi Tserkvi, by A. V. Kartashov. Other minor sources utilized are noted in the footnotes.

4

To understand better this volume on monastery prisons, the following information is provided to the reader in regard to the clergy of Russian Orthodoxy.

There is only one Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in office. Shortly after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, Moscow claimed itself the Third Rome and set up this office similar to the Roman Catholic Pope, and which pertained to the Metropolitan of Moscow. The office only existed to 1700 when Peter the Great failed to nominate a new Patriarch and subsequently abolished the office. He replaced the office with a council known as the Holy Synod. The Patriarchate was resurrected in 1917 by the Orthodox Church during the Provisional Government after the dismissal of the Holy Synod, and a new Patriarch was elected.

Beginning in 1722 the Orthodox church was directed by the Holy Synod installed by Peter the Great. His purpose was to make Orthodoxy a branch or department of the government, and which he succeeded within a few years. The real authority in religious matters was invested in the person appointed by the tsar as ober-procurator, or, attorney-general, of the Holy Synod. Originally his position was to be a liaison between tsar and church, but later his role and authority increased. Some attorney-generals operated the church in a business fashion, others as religious dictators. The position of attorney-general dissolved with the Synod in 1917.

The Russian Orthodox Church has five metropolitans of primary importance. These are the metropolitans of Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Novgorod and Vladimir. The term archbishop was used for the bishop in charge of the capital city of a province. The bishop was in charge of a diocese, much smaller than a province.

The White clergy are the married clergy. They were primarily the village or town parish priest, deacon or lower rank. The highest rank a married priest could attain was proto-pope (arch-priest or proto-priest), who was senior priest in a parish. A married priest was often referred to as a white priest.

The Black clergy are unmarried (monastic). Beginning with the bishop and up to the Patriarch, they are always chosen from the monastic clergy. Because some lower positions could be held by either married or monastic, the monastic deacon or priest always had monk attached to his title, or was referred to as a black priest.

Proto-pope or, archpriest was the highest rank that a married priest could attain, having charge over several small parish churches.

The cathedral was the primary church in the capital of a diocese, where the bishop had his home.

The archimandrite was of the monastic order and charged as father superior over several small monasteries or one of large or special importance.

The abbot, or higumen, had charge over a small monastery, abbey or hermitage.

Hieromonk was a priest of the monastic order, often referred to as a black priest.

Hierodeacon was a deacon of the monastic order.

Every male who is tonsured and becomes a monk, and every female who takes the veil and becomes a nun, also abandon their secular name and assume a new name for the balance of their monastic career. The name is usually selected from a list of Russian male and female saints and other holy people of the ages. This is the reason, as the reader will notice, that many of the names of the Orthodox clergy are the same. To distinguish these people and to avoid confusion, their secular name is often included in parenthesis.

5

The author has attempted to be objective in this history without criticism or censure of conduct or policy of either the Russian Orthodox church or the regime of Imperial Russia. This volume is not intended to be a history of Russia, even though all its events are interwoven with it, and does not repeat the background of the cause of every incident. The activities, teachings, convictions, religious persuasions, and crimes of the victims must be understood in the context of the history of Russia, the government and polity and its opponents, and the fabric of Orthodoxy and the many religious dissenters and sectarians. This book is intended for the reader who already has a familiarity with the history of Imperial Russia and the Orthodox church along with the political struggles of the era.

A capsule description of the primary dissenters and sectarians that evolved in Russia over the centuries and which are mentioned further in this book are the following.

The dissenters of Orthodoxy were the Old Believers, or Old Ritualists. They were a good percentage of established Russian Orthodoxy who refused to accept the reforms of patriarch Nikon of 1652-1658. Even though the reforms of Nikon dealt only with rite and ritual, the simple peasant Russians of the era were very traditional and superstitious, and felt that the reforms actually altered the original religion as inherited and implemented by their forefathers. These Old Believers later divided into the priestly (Popovtsi) group, and the non-priestly (Bez-popovtsi) group. The priestly were a branch of the Old Believers that had a recognized priesthood, while the non-priestly rejected the entire consecrated priesthood, and had lay-ministers.

The Beguni (Wanderers or Pilgrims) retired from normal productive life and wandered about the country. They had a very literal acceptance of the text of Matthew 8:19-20.

The Judaizers rejected the doctrines formulated by Orthodoxy, veneration of icons, and their priesthood. They surfaced in northern Russia at the end of the 15th and early 16th centuries, and whose primary promoter was Sakharia. Their interpretation of the Bible was heavily based on the Old Testament. Although they referred to themselves as the Novoi Uchenia (New Teaching), because of similarity to Jewish practices, the Orthodoxy labeled them as Judaizers. They were heavily persecuted especially by the Orthodox elder-inquisitors Ioseph Voloko-Lamsk and Gennadi. They sect was suppressed and went underground, but small groups on occasion to the end of the 18th century appeared in various parts of central Russia.

Matvei Semeonovich Bashkin was a rationalist of 16th century Russia, who rejected Orthodox rite and ceremony and composed an evangelical approach to the practice of the Christian teaching. Bashkin was executed in 1555 in Red Square by order of Ivan the Terrible.

The Khlisti, or Flagellants, also known as People of God (Ludi Bozhie), followers of the mystic god Daniel Philipovich and the son of god Ivan Timofeevich Suslov. They originally called their leaders Christs or Khristi, which appellation was distorted by Orthodoxy to Khlisti, which then applied to all of this persuasion. They held to the rites and ceremony of Orthodoxy but also conducted their own prayer services in homes and apartments where they sang and danced in the Spirit and prophesied. Orthodoxy vehemently slandered the Khlisti and unnecessarily, claiming immorality, when in reality the members were very austere with a high ethic and morality.

The Scoptsi (Eunuchs) were a very small segment of the sectarian population, which taught and practiced emasculation. They regularly attended the prayer services of the Khlisti and participated in them. The members of the Scoptsi underwent the surgical procedure of emasculation to deprive themselves of the lust of the flesh, believing in literal understandings of Matt 18:8-9, to cut off that member of their body leading them to sin, and Matt 19:12, to make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God. This group also had a high morality and ethic.

The largest sectarian group of Imperial Russia was the Molokans, numbering over one million at the beginning of the 20th century. The Molokans were organized into a denomination in the middle 18th century by the evangelist Semeon Uklein who furthered the work of Bashkin and Tveritinov, whose disciples were members of scattered communities. They were very evangelical, rejecting all the rite and ceremony, priesthood and superficial piety of Orthodoxy. More than any other sectarian group, they had the highest morality and ethic.

Further information on the dissenters and sectarians is available in the book Russian Dissenters, by F.C. Conybeare.

2 - MONASTERY PRISONS

1

It is due to the failure of attempting to change the inclinations of a person’s inner man by the use of logic or persuasion that compelled the medieval practice of incarceration of dissenters and sectarians and political activists. Monastery incarceration was the result of both the religious and political intolerance of Imperial Russia and Orthodox church. This was the means they implemented in order to attempt control of the minds of men. And fail they did.

The official ideology of the monarchic-feudal Russian sovereignty was the Eastern Greek Orthodox Christian religion, referred to plainly as Orthodoxy, and was sanctioned by the supreme rule of Imperial Russia and the ruling aristocracy. A good portion of the inmates of monastery prisons were those considered enemies of Orthodoxy: Protestants and Catholics, Jews and Islam, and those of foreign or pagan convictions. But the attitude of religious dis-sention also extended to that affecting the state. Many heretics committed themselves to religious views incompatible with Orthodoxy, which led to disapproving attitudes toward the state: they rejected military service and refused to pledge