Russian Orthodox monasticism in Riga diocese, 1881–1917

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers the foundation of four Orthodox monasteries and convents in Riga diocese in the late nineteenth century and how these conceptually and physically transformed diocesan space through borderland rhetoric and the creation of internal and external religious and social networks. Analyzing the foundation of these institutions, their demographic profiles, their role in social outreach, and their function as loci of Orthodox religiosity in the region, it is argued that the monasteries helped turn Riga diocese from a backwater of the Church into a borderland bastion of both the faith and Russian nationality, which was given impetus by dual (and often intersecting) processes of russification and eparchial institutionalization. Despite some achievements by 1914, the First World War effectively ended the roles of the monasteries in this process, as the imperial framework of both their rhetoric and their networks collapsed under the pressure of German invasion.