Saints

SAINTS

In addition to the saints inherited from the Early Church and Byzantium, the Orthodox Church in Rus soon began to create its own objects of veneration. The saints belonged to three main categories:(1) spiritual and secular leaders who rendered significant service to the Church; (2) martyrs; and (3) those who exhibited extraordinary spiritual gifts, specifically the power to perform miracles, especially through their relics. Although the miracles were not a formal precondition under canon law, popular Orthodoxy placed a high value on this quality, primarily if manifested in "uncorrupted remains" (netlennye moshchi ). The miracle of physical preservation, attested by an official examination of the crypt, reinforced belief in the power to perform miracles and hence intercede on behalf of the disabled and distressed.

Canonizations in the Russian Orthodox Church have proceeded in a highly uneven fashion. In early medieval Russia (from Christianization in 988 to the 1547 Church Council), the Russian Church canonized only nineteen figures; the first to be so honored were the princes Boris and Gleb, whose nonresistance to a violent death amidst the fratricidal warfare made them the very model of kenoticism. The first major burst of canonizations came during the Church Councils of 1547 and 1549, which, reflecting Muscovy's new self-assertion as the Third Rome, recognized thirty-nine new saints. Subsequently the church slowly expanded the number of saints, but that process came to a virtual halt in 1721: It canonized only five new saints before Nicholas II ascended the throne in 1894 and sought to bolster autocracy by favoring canonization and emphasizing the religious foundations of autocracy. The Bolshevik Revolution brought all of that to an end; the new regime actively engaged in de-canonization, opening scores of saints' crypts (to demonstrate that the "uncorrupted relics" were frauds) and consigning relics to museums and storage. Although the Church was able to canonize five saints in the 1960s and 1970s, an era of large-scale canonizations opened in 1988. Over the next decade the church canonized a long list of prominent medieval figures (i.e., Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy and the icon-painter Andrei Rublev) as well as many martyred during the Soviet era.

By 1999 the Russian Orthodox Church had a total of 1,362 saints. The majority came from the hierarchy (11.5%) and monastic orders (49.9%); few of the parish clergy were canonized (1.8%), all, indeed, on the basis of marytyrdom. In addition to a substantial number of princes and tsars (6.9%), the church canonized ordinary lay martyrs (24.5%), some "fools-in-Christ" (3.2%), and laypersons venerated for their extraordinary spirituality (2.3%). These saints are, moreover, overwhelmingly male (96.4%). Since 1999, the church has begun to change these proportions, chiefly because of the ongoing canonization of martyrs (e.g., more than a thousand in August 2000). While some decisions have been exceedingly controversial (above all, the canonization of Nicholas II and his family), the church seeks to pay homage to the ordinary priests and parishioners who paid the ultimate price for their unswerving faith during the merciless repressions of the first decades of Soviet rule.

See also: hagiography; orthodoxy; religion; russian orthodox church

bibliography

Freeze, Gregory. (1996). "Subversive Piety: Religion and the Political Crisis in Late Imperial Russia." Journal of Modern History 68:308–50.

Grunwald, Constantin de. (1960). Saints of Russia. London: Hutchinson.

Gregory L. Freeze