Меланхолия приходит в Россию. Монастыри как долгаузы в России в XVIII веке

Abstract

Western historiography about the history of madness has pointed out that the emergence and active use of special medical terms led to the development of certain discourses on disease which had been appropriated and used on a subjective level. The discourse on melancholy is such a case. And it may seem surprising that the history of melancholy has remained a West European phenomenon until this day: For Russia, there are no studies on melancholy as illness, sin of acedia or social deviance in the eighteenth century. This article aims to close this gap and systemize melancholics from the point of view of the state, clerical actors and society. With this in mind this article will observe a special socio-cultural phenomenon—the confinement of the so-called “izumlennye,” or “madmen” in monasteries, which were similar to west European institutions that functioned using internment, punishment and discipline. This article will address the following aspects of the melancholy discourse: 1) Madness as a security issue: Internment of the “mad” in severe monastery prisons; 2) Melancholy as illness and self-diagnosis: Melancholy as a reason for the reduction of punishment; 3) Melancholy as external diagnosis in family conflicts and the argument for sending “mentally sick” relatives to the monastery; and, finally, 4) Religious melancholy: those who doubted their own faith and went to repent in a monastery.