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TheSpiritual Regulation of 1721 embodied Peter the Great's blueprint for the perestroika of the Russian Orthodox Church. Among its many provisions outlining the public purposes of religion and establishing a new administrative structure for the Church, the Spiritual Regulation expressed concern for the problem of “superstitious practices”: wandering holy fools, klikushki (hysterical women), improbable versions of saints' lives, false reports of miracles from icons, and bogus relics. The Spiritual Regulation charged Church authorities – parish priests, local bishops, and its new central ruling body – with investigating such inappropriate popular religious observances and stamping them out. Specifically, the new edict dictated that priests inform the appropriate ecclesiastical and secular authorities if “someone imagined in some way a false miracle, or contrived it hypocritically, and then broadcast it so that the simple and unreasoning people take it for the truth.” Bishops, for their part, were to report to the Ecclesiastical College (or, as it was renamed almost immediately, the “Most Holy Governing Synod”) twice annually about the state of their eparchies, including instances of “false miracles from holy icons” and “unattested dead bodies” – that is, the relics of unofficial saints. After receiving such reports, the Synod then had the obligation to launch formal investigations of all such “apparitions” and “miracles.” Offenders would be subject not only to ecclesiastical penalties, but also to severe civil ones. Scholars of the Petrinereforms have not previously tried to trace the methods the Russian Church hierarchy used to regulate popular religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian church schism of the seventeenth century is the focal point of this brief examination of popular belief and practice and the struggles of ecclesiastical elites to shape, control, and change them. The chapter will review and reflect on the most important phases of the interaction between the leaders of Russian Orthodoxy and ordinary parishioners between the late 1630s and the beginning of the eighteenth century in light of recent studies of Christian communities elsewhere in early modern Europe. It contains no new archival discoveries: Most of the documents and monographs on which it draws have long been familiar to historians of Russia. These sources, moreover, reflect the perceptions of government officials or ecclesiastical polemicists. Thus, as Eve Levin cautions, when describing popular religious beliefs and practices, they are likely to focus on “the most heterodox elements” that diverge most dramatically from established norms. In spite of the country's enormous territory, the discussion will consider Russia as a single unit for two reasons. First, even a glance at scholarship on Western and Central Europe shows how limited and scattered are the surviving sources on Russian parish life and popular religious practice. For one thing, historians of Russia must live without systematic parish records. Second, in spite of the Muscovite monarchy's vast size, movements of popular religious protest spread quickly, in large measure through the efforts of itinerant agitators and exiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]