Parish Priesthood of the Don Host Region: Features of the Formation of the Social Status and Its Change Between the Mid 17th and the Early 20th Century

Abstract

Introduction. This article deals with a pressing problem of historical science: the analysis of the social status of the parish priesthood in the South of Russia, and its transformations on the example of the Don Host region. Methods and materials. Some pre-revolutionary regional research works, as well as some published and unpublished materials, are used as references. This article is based on sets of documents of central and regional archives, most of which being introduced scientifically for the first time ever. The methodological basis for this article is made up of the principles which are traditional for this type of research: scientific objectivism, systematic approach and historicism, and the general scientific method of structural and functional analysis that allowed to determine the social position of the priesthood in the regional community of the Don region. Being guided by the historical and comparative method allowed revealing and specifying the peculiar conditions of the priesthood in the Don region against the background of the changes in the cultural and historical situation. Analysis and Results. By the middle of the 17th century, being part of the Don Host, the local priests had acquired a status that made them really different from priests of other provinces of the Russian Empire, for they only reported to the army authorities and were considered to be part of the Cossack community, without having any signs of making an independent estate. Since the establishment of the independent Don and Novocherkassk Diocese in 1829, the priesthood became subordinate to the diocesan archbishop, that allowed to speak about the initial stage of the formation of the priesthood and its social status that corresponded to it. In the period of the reforms introduced by emperor Alexander II, aimed at improving the social status of the parish priesthood of the Russian Empire, the social status of the Don priesthood, due to the completion of integration into the all-Russian practice, significantly increased and got unified with the all-Russian social status. The highest point of development of the social status of the Don priesthood is the time of existence of the All-Great Don Host (1918–1919), which, in accordance with its peculiar ideology, provided the priesthood with exclusive rights and privileges in conditions of the Civil war.