Images of the cemetery in the worldview of the Orthodox clergy and their influence on folk culture (the case of church journalism of the late 19th – early 20th c.)

About the author:

Anna A. Bushueva, M. A. in History, 4th year Ph. D. student, Kurgan State University, Kurgan, Russia, anna_b2022@mail.ru; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1100-8561

Abstract:

This article analyzes the ideas of the Orthodox clergy on the cemetery as a special mortal space, reflected in the church journalism of the Tobolsk, Perm, Ryazan, Vyatka, Kursk, and Omsk diocesan journals. Firstly, the author considers how the cemetery images were associated with the system of religious values, what roles it played in the system of religious symbols and allegories, what emotional patterns it was embedded in, how close (“friend”) or distant (“foe”) the cemetery was perceived by the clergy. Secondly, the article shows to what extent the position of cemeteries in the system of values corresponded to their real state at the material and everyday level, and to what extent they fit into the folk worldview. On the way from the church ideal to their everyday practice, priests as observers and critics noted the widespread inconvenience of cemeteries, multiple conflicts with peasants (sectarians and settlers in Siberia) for actual and symbolic power over the burial space. The discrepancies between the church and folk views of the cemetery (and, more broadly, the attitude towards death) are illustrated by the study of such an aspect, as the specific culture of gravediggers, who are close to the dead like priests, but in many aspects, they are ideologically and behaviorally far from the church ideal.

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