Provision of Housing for Parish Clergy in the Post-Reform Period

Abstract

During the Synodal period, a problem of providing housing for priests and deacons of the Russian Orthodox Church was acute. The government sought to raise the social status of clergy in view of the role the Church played in educational and social missions in the provinces. On June 29, 1862, a Special Commission on Affairs of the Orthodox Clergy was created. The commission studied the opinions of priests on need of carrying out reforms in everyday life. The clergy hoped to raise the level of material support, including means of providing rectories. The article examines the problem of providing priests of dioceses of the Central Black Earth with rectories in the second half of the 19th century on the basis of archival materials and the published sources. The author comes to the conclusion that the government couldn’t provide clergy with houses. On June 21, 1863, the emperor Alexander II signed the law obliging parishioners to provide priests of newly founded churches with housing. However, in practice peasants were not willing to carry out resolutions of the authorities and delayed approval of social agreement as long as possible. Besides, rectories required repair and additional investments. Parishioners considered that their duty was to provide housing for clergymen. According to peasants, priests, but not laymen, had to maintain houses. Therefore, the clergy preferred to buy their own houses and were forced to allocate considerable material resources for the purpose. It led to the fact that priests had to devote most part time to search for means of additional income to the detriment of their primary duties.