The traditional territorial structure of Andoma parish in Olonets uyezd in the first half of the 18th century

Abstract

The article investigates the specific features in the territorial structure of the church parish on the Andoma pogost district of the Olonets uyezd during the first half of the 18th century. The set problem has not been the subject of close analysis in the historiography yet. Approving the idea that the parish on the North-West of Russia was coherent with the small district (volost’) in 17—18th centuries, emphasizing the unity of the parish, scientists mainly focused on the problem of identifying the general features of the parish and on classification of parishes. The study is based on a comparative analysis of data that were fixed in the reports of the local priests in 1708 and confessional records in 1769. The reconstruction of the grid of all mentioned in the sources villages were used for visualizing the groups of villages, inhabitants of which belonged to different parts of the parish. The revealing data as well as the reconstruction of peculiarities how the clergy was attached to one or another church and how the staff of the clergy was divided into two parts allow us to conclude that the church parish of the Andoma pogost district had significantly more complicated structure, especially in comparative with the structure of church parishes of not very vast districts (volosts). According to tradition the parish was divided into two parts for regulating mechanism of material support of the clergy, distributing obligations among them and satisfaction spiritual needs of the laity. Both parts of the parish had a significant degree of self-dependence: each had its own church, own clergy that was included in the common clergy staff (shtat), and the strictly geographically localized group of villages. The stable using of archaic practices in the territorial organization of the parish during the first half of the 18th century suggests that the local community managed to adapt them to the newly approved legislative principles, aimed at unifying and enlarging church parishes. This was largely possible as the state and church policy took into account archaic traditions of local communities and was aimed on results in the long term.