(1619–33) and Nikon (1652–8) amassed wealth and power for the patriarchate;
enterprising bishops did the same for themselves. In reality, the Russian Orthodox
Church lacked central institutional control. Each hierarch was sovereign in his vast
domains, as were monasteries over their lands. Most of the hundreds of monasteries
throughout the realm were small and poor, but a few were economic and cultural
powerhouses. The St. Cyril-Beloozero in the north, the Joseph-Volokolamsk and
Trinity-St. Sergii near Moscow, and several in Moscow and the Kremlin benefited
from generous patronage by elite and tsar. Their vast holdings of peasant villages
made them rich, which they reflected in splendid treasuries, architectural ensem-
bles, and cultural production (scriptoria, icon, and fresco workshops). Juridically,
monasteries enjoyed immunities not only from the sovereign’s courts but also from
diocesan courts; they adjudicated cases with in-house panels of elders and tried to
avoid even the mandatory criminal jurisdiction of secular authorities when possible.
Paralleling this institutional diversity was textual chaos. Virtually each monastery,
each cathedral, each parish church used different service books, books that had over
time accreted minor variations in rituals or prayers.
Compounding the problem of diocesan and monastic autonomy was the weak-
ness of the church at the parish level. Monasteries could own populated lands
throughout the realm and devoted few resources to parish oversight. Dioceses for
Orthodox not on monastic land were huge. In the mid-sixteenth century, the
Muscovite Church had one metropolitan, two archbishops, and seven bishops; in
1672 there were seventeen such entities, and the Council of 1681/2, recognizing
the need for more and smaller dioceses, created four additional ones. But the
Church’s efforts to further improve the density of church oversight in the 1680s
were rebuffed by bishops unwilling to lose lands and resources. Unlike their
medieval Catholic counterparts, Russian bishops did not do routine visitations of
their dioceses, ruling through minions more renowned for corrupt exploitation
than for pastoral solicitude. Parishes were small and scattered; since they elected
their own parish priests and supported them with land and goods, they had
significant control. Priests had little oversight from their bishops and little leverage
against communities’divergences from canonical belief or practice.
VISIONS OF SPIRITUALITY
It is impossible to penetrate the spiritual world of East Slavs in thefifteenth through
seventeenth centuries; one can only observe outward manifestations of spirituality,
such as the ideals attributed to a particular saint by his or her hagiographer or the
messages conveyed in sermons or history writing. These were, however, remarkably
consistent and changed over time in interesting ways.
A major locus of expressions of spirituality was monasticism, so much so that the
monastic ideal has been taken by some as the spirituality of the mass of the
population. We cannot know that. But it is clear that Russians were drawn to
join monasteries in the centuries when Moscow was consolidating its power, from
about the late 1300s to about 1500. Whether out of spiritual commitment or for
248 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801