Suslova E.D. Voznesensky Svirsky female coenobitic monastery: the community’s daily life during the first third of the 18th century

Abstract: This article is dedicated to the study of the daily life and management organisation in one of the first female coenobitic monasteries in Karelia during the period of Peter the Great’s reforms. On the example of the conflict that arose in 1719–1720 among the nuns of the Voznesensky monastery, located by the confluence of the Svir river into Lake Onega and part of the Zaonezhskaya tithe of the Novgorod metropolis, the author examines the questions related to the nominations for the post of monastery builder and contributors, and the general organisation of the household. This research is based on a comparative analysis of the documents from the legal case: petitions, interrogation speeches, accounts, formal replies, ordinances. The additional information derived from literature, acts of writ proceedings, and census books has allowed to broaden our perception of the circumstances and consequences of the litigation. It was discovered that within the community’s inner order of life different traditions became intertwined, ascendants of two diverse ways of organising monastic life. On the one hand, nuns possessed common property and sought to follow the coenobitic principle of collegiality in the monastery’s management. Nonetheless, some chance individuals came to head the community and, seeking to get out of its control, became despotic temporary workers. On the other hand, the monastery was also inhabited by archaic traditions of idiorrythmic monasticism that were introduced by the elders who had previously lived near parish churches and constituted the core of the community. The lack of unity among the sisters and the weakening of the moral and spiritual discipline were commonplace occurrences not only for the Voznesensky monastery, but also for other monasteries of the Novgorod metropolis and Kholmogory diocese in the last third of the 17th – first third of the 18th centuries. Ecclesiastical and secular authorities undertook measures to eradicate and order some of the ancient practices, but their efforts, however, were not marked by consistency.

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