Punishment by Penance in 18th-Century Russia: Church Practices in the Service of the Secular State

Abstract

Historians look for special terms to characterize every era, and capacious metaphors often predominate over scholarly terminology. Perhaps no period in Russian history has attracted as many figurative designations as the second half of the 18th century. Researchers refer to the reigns of Elizabeth and of Catherine II as the Age of Enlightenment and the development of legal monarchy; as a key stage in the secularization, Westernization, and modernization of the empire; and as the golden age of the nobility, a period when serfdom became most deeply entrenched. (1) These well-known characterizations acquire new meanings as scholars shift focus, casting key events in a new light. This article focuses on the process by which the state actively came to rely on church practices and religious worldviews and values in prosecuting felonies committed by lay people. This change--which is clearly evident in legislation, official pronouncements and declarations, judicial proceedings, and sentences--was conditioned by many factors. First, the number of murders markedly increased during this period, especially crimes committed under the influence of alcohol and while in a drunken stupor (p'ianym delom i v bespamiatstve). The latter trend grew, indirectly at least, from the establishment of a unified grain market, the great profitability of distilling alcohol, and, as a result, the great availability of grain alcohol. (2) Second, landowners, having gained full jurisdiction over their serfs, treated returned runaways and those implicated in theft with special cruelty, sometimes causing their deaths. Third, the spectrum of punishments for noble persons party to crimes was significantly curtailed during the second half of the 18th century. Catherine II's Charter to the Nobility of 1785 stipulated that persons of noble birth were not to be touched by the knout or whip. The moratorium on capital punishment, tacitly introduced by Elizabeth, was also confirmed in these years. (3) At first glance, therefore, Russia's Age of Enlightenment and secularization would seem to be at odds with the phenomenon described here: the state's growing reliance on the authority of faith and appropriation of church rituals, especially penance, in the fight against criminal offenses committed by lay persons. Complex social, ideological, and spiritual developments that were then underway in Russian society help explain this paradox. No study has been devoted to this specific topic, which promises to help scholars reinterpret such important conceptual problems as the relationship between church and state; mechanisms of social control; the role of the monarch's personality in shaping government policy; and the compatibility, as contemporaries perceived it, between God's commandments and state law. (4) The 20-Year Moratorium on the Death Penalty It is well known that in the 20 years of Empress Elizabeth's reign, from 1741 to 1761, the penalty was hardly ever carried out. The decree of 7 May 1744 stayed executions for convicts sentenced to the supreme penalty. (5) The decree met with strict compliance, despite complaints from local authorities who were forced to continue feeding pardoned prisoners. (6) The Senate's expressions of grave concern, too, went unheeded. (7) Elizabeth likewise rejected political death (politicheskaia smert'), a theatricalized imitation of an execution that consisted of mounting the scaffold. (8) It seems that Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov was right when, describing the 1741 palace coup, he recalled the empress's prayer and vow not to take the life of a single subject: During the proceedings that led her to take the Russian throne, she vowed before the image of the Savior that, if ever she ascended to her ancestors' throne, then for the duration of her reign, no one would be condemned to by her order. (9) Scholars have expressed some skepticism regarding the plausibility of this scene in Shcherbatov's essay, so classical in its staging. …