“Message” by I. Gerasimov: Peasant apology of spasovo denomination in the middle of the 19th century

Abstract

The article presents a message of the Old Believers’ Spasovo denomination by a peasant Ivan Gerasimov from the Kazan Province. The document is introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The approximate date of writing this text refers to the time interval between June 15, 1849 and June 10, 1850. The appearance of the “message” was caused by the reaction of I. Gerasimov to the initiation of an investigative case against him with apostasy of schism. Like most representatives of the Spasovo denomination (“glukhoy netovshchiny” or “starospasovtsev”), he was baptized in the Orthodox Church. However, like other old believers, I. Gerasimov denied the existence of the church, and thus did not perform the rites accepted in the Orthodox Church, which was a formal reason for accusing him of evading a split. It was in the process of investigation that he wrote this message, the recipient of which was the local Orthodox priesthood. The uniqueness of this source lies in the fact that the message is one of the rare written documents that emerged in the first half of the XIX century. Until the middle of the 19th century written sources that belonged or could belong to the spasovtsy, are extremely rare; unlike the second half of this century, when the Old Believers of the studied denomination actively polemicized both with each other and with representatives of other Old Believers, about the various subjects of faith. The note itself is an apology of the Bespopovsky doctrine of salvation of Spasovo denomination, the purpose of which was to prove the possibility of Christian salvation outside the institution of the Orthodox Church.