Baptism of the Mordva in Nizhny Novgorod Governorate — the conversion of the Erzya, Moksha, and Teryukhane to Orthodox Christianity, a process that unfolded throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and reached its greatest scale in the 1740s under Bishop Dimitry (Sechenov) and the Office of Newly Baptized Affairs established in 1740. According to a register submitted to the Synod, between 1740 and 1744 the diocese recorded 50,430 newly baptized converts, and 82 churches were built for them.[1][2][3]
Office of Newly Baptized Affairs
The Office was established by a decree of Empress Anna Ioannovna dated 11 September 1740 — "On the dispatch of an archimandrite with a number of clergy to various governorates to instruct the newly baptized in the Christian faith, and on the privileges granted to the newly baptized." It was based in Sviyazhsk at the Bogoroditsky Monastery, and its jurisdiction extended over Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, and Astrakhan Governorates.[2][4]
The Office was headed by Archimandrite Dimitry (Sechenov) — the very same man who two years later took up the Nizhny Novgorod see. The staff comprised five clergy; soldiers were assigned for travel; thirty young men drawn from the clerical, lesser merchant, and noble estates who knew the languages of the non-Orthodox were selected as assistants, and a commission was formed consisting of two Kazan protopriests and five interpreters.[2][4]
Four schools for the children of the newly baptized were to be opened — with the proviso that the children should "not forget their native languages either." A special official was charged with overseeing the resettlement of the baptized and protecting them from mistreatment: from 1742 this was retired military officer Boris Yartsev, while for Nizhny Novgorod Governorate the post fell to retired Major Larionov, who was required to tour the newly baptized villages twice a year.[2][4]
After Dimitriy's departure to his see, Archimandrite Silvestr Glovatsky took charge of the Office; by the mid-1750s it had become the executive body of the Kazan bishop, and in 1764 it was abolished. The Nizhny Novgorod Spiritual Consistory, through which baptismal affairs in the governorate were processed, was established in 1744.[2][4]
To teach the said newly baptized children Russian literacy by the alphabet and the syllables of the primer together with the Ten Commandments… yet at the same time to watch over them, that they should not forget their native tongues either[2]
What was promised to those who converted
Legal benefits for the newly baptized existed long before the Office. A decree of Tsar Fyodor Alekseyevich dated 16 May 1681 promised Mordva converts six years' exemption from all taxes; under Peter I the exemption was reduced to three years, and in November 1722 the tsar specifically ordered the Kazan governor not to conscript those who had been baptized and to discharge those already taken.[2][5]
The decree of 1740 granted three years free of taxes, exemption from military conscription and from labor at state-owned factories, and in addition an issue of clothing and money. Dimitriy's ordinance set this out in detail: a copper cross, a shirt with breeches, a coarse woolen caftan with a hat and mittens, chiri footwear with stockings; for those "of higher standing" — silver crosses and a caftan of dyed broadcloth at fifty kopeks per arshin; for women — a volosnik (hair-net), a linen shirt, and a sarafan. Icons of the Savior and the Mother of God were included as well.[1][2]
The decree of 28 September 1743 exempted converted non-Orthodox from punishment for minor offenses, and in the Teryushevo case all guilt was remitted except for those culpable "in two grave matters and in homicide."[2][6]
What this meant for those who remained unbaptized
The flip side of these privileges was the redistribution of obligations: taxes were levied on those who had not accepted baptism in place of those who had, the unbaptized were conscripted as recruits instead of the baptized, and were relocated from their settled lands. The mechanism is clearly visible in the Teryushevo affair: for five recruits who had been baptized, the volost was required to provide five new ones, and the exchange went round in circles.[2][6]
For this reason, baptism was sometimes a straightforward calculation. In the petitions of the newly baptized, the same argument recurs: there was no longer any means to pay the former taxes, and baptism brought an exemption.[2]
There is a continual exchange of five men serving as recruits: some are released upon being baptized, while others, the unbaptized, are exacted in their place, and so on without end[6]
How many were baptized
Tallies were kept through reports and registers, and the figures in them vary in scope. The general order of magnitude is as follows: in the first decade after Peter, conversions numbered in the thousands; over two years of the Office's operation, already in the tens of thousands; and by the mid-1740s, virtually the entire Mordva and Chuvash population of the diocese was counted among the newly baptized. Then the flow ceased almost instantaneously.[1][2][3]
The number of churches built under Dimitry throughout the diocese cannot be derived from the archives; only the register for 1740–1744 covering four districts is reliable.[2][3]
| Years | Location | Baptized | Churches |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1719–1730 | Kazan Diocese | 2,160 people | — |
| 1741–1742 | Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod Governorates | 17,362 people | 30 churches, 45,000 rubles from the College of Economy |
| 1740–1744 | Nizhny Novgorod Diocese | 50,430 people | 82 churches: 14 in Nizhegorodsky Uyezd, 49 in Alatyrsky, 10 in Kurmyshsky, 9 in Yadrinsky |
| by 1745 | Tatar villages of the diocese | 226 people in 11 out of 25 villages | — |
| autumn 1743 | Teryushevskaya Volost | around 500 people | — |
| 1746–1749 | Nizhny Novgorod Governorate | 48 people | — |
Complaints and limits
The Kontora's own instructions required "not to compel non-Orthodox believers, either by words or by actions, to accept baptism." In practice, complaints were made that the Nizhny Novgorod archiereus was compelling people by force, holding the recalcitrant in shackles and stocks, and baptizing them while bound.[1][2]
The matter came under formal scrutiny following the Teryushevskoe Uprising of 1743–1745, which began on 18 May 1743 with the destruction of a Mordva cemetery near the selo of Sarley. The owner of the volost, Georgian prince Bakar, brought the case to the Senate: the volost had been laid waste, the peasants were fleeing into the forests, the grain was left unharvested, and there was no one from whom to collect the quitrent.[6]
A Senate decree of 8 July 1744 ordered the military detachment withdrawn from the volost, its upkeep credited against the peasants' poll tax, baptism permitted only for willing converts, and this point confirmed to the Nizhny Novgorod bishop by a special instruction. At the same time, the practice of conscripting unbaptized men as recruits in place of those who had converted, and of relocating them from villages where newly baptized residents lived, was discontinued; a full arrest of all the ringleaders was abandoned given their great number.[1][6]
And by force and under compulsion no one shall be baptized into the Christian faith, so that no ill consequences of the former kind may arise therefrom[6]
How it all ended
Mass baptism turned out to be largely a matter of record-keeping. As early as 1746, Dimitry himself reported that the newly baptized were not attending services, were not wearing crosses, were not bringing their children to be baptized, and were not conveying their dead to the church for burial. Copies of decrees prohibiting the compulsion of non-Orthodox believers to convert to Orthodoxy continued to be circulated later as well — for example, on 7 January 1751.[1][2]
The old rites persisted for a long time. Half a century after the Teryushevo events, in 1808–1810, a serf named Alekseyev Kuzma, known as Kuzka-bog, preached in that same volost, and Melnikov-Pechersky in 1848 encountered a communal prayer service in the grove near the selo of Sarley.[7][5]
Beliefs of the Erzya and their pantheon are treated separately; for the uprising itself, see the article "The Teryushevskoye Uprising".[8][5]
Sources
- pravenc.ru — Orthodox Encyclopedia — DIMITRY (Sechenov Daniil Andreyevich). Vol. 15, p. 93 (archive)
- idmedina.ru — Medina Publishing House — I. Kh. Strelkova. The Activities of the Office of Newly Baptized Affairs in the Territory of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate in the 1740s–1750s (archive)
- pravenc.ru — Orthodox Encyclopedia — Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas Diocese (archive)
- idmedina.ru — Medina Publishing House — I. Kh. Strelkova. Results of the Activities of the Office of Newly Baptized Affairs (Faizkhanov Readings) (archive)
- opentextnn.ru — Open Text — P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky. Essays on the Mordva, a Historical Sketch ("Russky Vestnik," 1867) (archive)
- vostlit.info — Russkoye Obozreniye — A. Titov. The Teryushevo Uprising. No. 10, 1893: conclusion of the case (archive)
- pravenc.ru — Orthodox Encyclopedia — MORDOVIA. Vol. 47 (N. F. Mokshin, E. N. Mokshina, V. G. Pidgayko) (archive)
- cyberleninka.ru — Sotsialno-Politicheskiye Nauki — E. N. Mokshina. Christianization of the Mordva, 2014 (archive)