A quantitative study of the transformation of female orthodox monasticism in imperial Russia

Abstract

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, female Orthodox monasticism in Russia was strikingly transformed. Not only did female communities grow rapidly in number and membership, but their demographic characteristics, geographic location, predominant organizational structure, social role, and, often, relative wealth also changed dramatically. New entrants were younger, far fewer had been married, their social background altered markedly, literacy levels rose substantially, communities became predominantly rural rather than urban, most were organized communally rather than idiorrhythmically, a higher percentage possessed substantial wealth, and most now provided a range of social services. But because of the nature of available sources, much of the dynamic of this transformation remains opaque. In particular, few members of women’s monastic communities have left written sources that could provide insight into their motives, religious sensibilities, self-understandings, and experiences. Using the Nizhnii Novgorod Convent of the Exaltation of the Cross as an example, this article demonstrates how a quantitative analysis of the membership reports submitted annually by Orthodox monastic communities to local diocesan authorities and to the Holy Synod after the early nineteenth century can be used to compensate for the limited availability of qualitative sources. Such an analysis reveals how the interaction between the internal reorganization of the convent on a communal basis and developments in its external environment transformed the convent from a small community of limited means composed mainly of older, predominantly widowed and largely illiterate women into a large and wealthy community that appealed overwhelmingly to young, unmarried, and disproportionately literate women, increasingly from the unprivileged urban and especially rural strata of society. Refs 55. Tables 11. Figs 2.