Abstract:
"Muscovite Women in Religion" is an examination not only of how the Orthodox Church and Russian society defined women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but also how women engaged and experienced religion. This is a particularly interesting period in Russian religious history in general, because of many important religious developments that occurred during the Muscovite era, such as the expansion of monasticism, the establishment of a Russian patriarchate in 1589, witch trials in the seventeenth century, and a schism resulting in the establishment of the Old Believer sect that occurred in the 1660s. Muscovite women experienced religion in diverse ways. While peasant women in particular carried on pre-Christian traditions and practiced magic, upper-class women, particularly members of the tsar's family, often had less syncretic religious experience. Women of all classes became nuns for various reasons, and the paper explores female asceticism in some detail. As virgins, nuns were associated Mary, the Mother of God. Mothers could also be identified with Mary, who, along with Eve, provided one of the two primary Biblical types that contributed to the Orthodox Church's understanding of women's roles. Of course, this phenomenon was not unique to Russian Orthodoxy, but was quite common throughout medieval and early modern Christendom. Arguing that patriarchy makes women's religious experience fundamentally different from that of men, this paper examines the meaning of patriarchy and considers women's particular experiences within this wider framework, highlighting evidence for female agency. This work is primarily a synthesis of research that has been done into Muscovite women's religious roles, which is an area in which much remains to be done.
