“Bury Me in the Enclosure”: Reflection of the Extraordinary Grave Practice in the Materials of the Tobolsk Spiritual Consistory

About the author:

Abstract:

This article aims at studying the archival files of the Tobolsk spiritual consistory from 1913 and analyzing the issue of extraordinary graves organization in the settlements territory. The studied material is valuable, first of all, as it reveals the mechanism of making decisions about funerals in closed cemeteries.

The indisputable value of these data is that there is no other known research relevant to this topic in the context of the Russian Empire’s burial legislation. The existing works concern only the organization of cemeteries outside the city limits after 24 December 1771. However, there is little understanding of the procedure for burial in closed parish cemeteries within settlements. The motives of petitioners who wish to be buried in such cemeteries remain generally in the field of conjecture.

The author considers several aspects. First, the legal nature of the case has been clarified from the point of genesis of legislation of the second half of the 17th-19th centuries, concerning the sanitary-epidemiological order in the burial of the deceased. Secondly, the social and gender composition, as well as the geography of petitioners, and their motives were studied. Thirdly, the mechanism of decision-making on such exceptional cases is analyzed. The author has revealed that, despite the Senate’s decree of 1771, which forbade burying on the cemeteries in the residential area and regulating the transfer of cemeteries, some relapses of the old tradition remained. Flexibilities in the organization of graves were reflected in legislation, for example, in the decree of the Holy Synod of 1833 among others. Legislatively, in exceptional cases, it was permitted to bury the deceased at churches, in a residential area. However, all the actions of the clergy for the burial, especially in exceptional cases, were regulated and controlled.

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