Jeanne Kormina, Sergey Shtyrkov

The Female Spiritual Elder and Death: Some Thoughts About Contemporary Lives of Russian Orthodox Saints

Jeanne Kormina - Assistant Professor at the Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg (Russia), kormina@eu.spb.ru

Sergey Shtyrkov - Senior Researcher, Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kunstkamera); Assistant Professor at the European University at St Petersburg (Russia), shtyr@eu.spb.ru

In the contemporary Orthodox hagiography the special type of saint has formed - blazhennyie staritsy ("blessed female spiritual elders"). In some respect this type of sainthood succeeds to traditional "folly for the sake of Christ". Yet the staritsy have their distinguishing features, and the main such feature is incurable disease such as blindness or motor function disorder. The meaning of such disorder can be interpreted as a sign of permanent liminality and the person's divine election. It indicates that while being alive she also belongs to the world of the dead (or the next world). The creation of these iconic narratives can be seen as attempts to democratize hagiographical canon by including some folk religious motives and images. Such folklorisation' of the genre of church hagiography expresses the idea that Orthodox faith has deep roots in the popular religiosity and therefore can be accessible to common people.

Keywords: anthropology of religion, Orthodox saints, contemporary hagiography, female sainthood, body, death.

On a SPRING day in 1952, Matrona Nikonova, a 67-year-old Muscovite woman, felt death approaching and asked to call a priest. At confession, "she was very worried," and when the priest asked: "Are you really afraid, too

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death?", answered: "I'm afraid" " 1. This short dialogue, which is included in the official version of the life of the blessed old woman Matrona, is always accompanied by an explanatory comment from the publishers - for example, that the priest was very surprised by this answer, or that she was afraid of death, like ordinary sinful people, "out of her humility", that is, even on her deathbed, she continued to thus, to perform a special Christian feat. Comments are framed by a paradox that is not obvious, but understandable to the pious reader - it turns out that there are saints who are afraid of death. This reader, if he is even minimally familiar with the hagiographic tradition, certainly knows that those special people who are revered as saints by others do not tend to be afraid of death. They have a special, trusting relationship with death: they know a lot about it, expect it, anticipate it, and often feel excited about the upcoming meeting with it. For them, as for the apostle Paul, "death is a gain" (Philippians 1: 21).

Even in the strict legal sense, saints become saints only after, or rather as a result of, their death. Until this or that ascetic of the faith has passed from this life to the eternal one, there are no icons and akathists, no matter how reverent feelings he may evoke in his most zealous admirers. Take the typical hagiological statement that so-and-so was a saint while still alive. This formula, the oxymoronic meaning of which we involuntarily feel, contains an unspoken assumption: we speak of a living righteous person N as a saint, knowing that this status can only be obtained after his death, that is, we get ahead of ourselves, assign this honorary title to N in advance. The same game of meanings is contained in the phrase that has the opposite meaning and the corresponding practice of awarding the title of Hero (of some state) posthumously. The hero decides to perform a feat and accomplishes his plan while still alive. Officially, he becomes a hero after his death, that is, retroactively. So a saint is a saint, even though he is still alive. It is as if he is betrothed to holiness, and it remains only to wait for the moment to fix the actual state of affairs legally. And the demise of the future saint is a signal for his worshippers to gather materials - documents and narratives - that will be used in the future.-

1. Matronushka. Akathist to the Holy Matron of Moscow. Zhitiye, Moscow: Loza Publ., 2009, p. 56.

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They are called for his glorification in the face of the saints of God. It is at this point that his images change their status - portraits turn into icons.

In those Christian traditions where the veneration of saints has acquired a stable form, death and holiness are inextricably linked genetically and functionally. One of the first specifically Christian customs was the practice of honoring the remains of martyrs who testified with their lives, or rather, with their deaths, their loyalty to Jesus Christ - faith in his atoning sacrifice and resurrection. As we know, a special relationship to the special dead is found both before and outside of Christianity. But the custom of early Christians to gather at the graves of their first saints for special holidays really scandalized their non-Orthodox neighbors. Peter Brown, a well-known scholar of the cult of saints, illustrates the feeling of revulsion that ancient people felt for the bodies of the dead and the rejection of Christian ritualism with the words of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate addressed to Christians: "You have filled the whole world with tombs and crypts."2 The aesthetic reasons for the rejection of Christian customs were definitely mixed with the lack of understanding by contemporaries of how the veneration of strangers, not relatives, the dead can determine the religious life of so many people. The spiritual families created around the tombs of new saints were undoubtedly a challenge for the main dominants of the social imagination of the ancient world.

The cult of saints, the veneration of their death and remains, has a long and vivid history, and to this day, for some, remains evidence of true piety, and for others - a wild, almost pagan, superstition. Although we can confidently speak about the sustainability of practices dating back to the first centuries of church history3, it would be at least idealistic to ignore the fact that they have changed significantly over the past centuries. Each epoch and each culture waits and generates its own" very special dead", its own views on death and builds a diverse, sometimes unexpected, relationship between the first and second. Our goal is not to build any complete information system.

2. Brown P. The cult of saints. Its role and formation in Latin Christianity, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004, p. 17.

3. See Cunningham, L. S. (2005) A Brief History of Saints, pp. 22-23 for a description of the "typical model" for establishing the veneration of a saint.

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pictures of this phenomenon at the level of church-wide history. We will be interested in a relatively special question: how do the phenomena of holiness and death relate in the hagiological imagination of Orthodox believers who comprehend the historical path of their church in the XX century - more precisely, the "small XX century", the chronological framework of which is determined by the dates of birth and death of the Soviet state. 4
New wine of new hagiography

Looking back and trying to assess the hagiographic legacy that the Soviet period of her life left to the Russian Orthodox Church5, we can, with some degree of convention, distinguish two separate groups of saints, each of which occupies its own clearly defined place in the space of Orthodox piety. The first group is the New Martyrs, officially called " new martyrs and confessors who shone forth in the land of Russia." Unlike the actual martyrs who died for their faith at the hands of the persecutors of Christianity in the first centuries of its existence, new martyrs (understood as a separate hagiological type) suffered in modern or modern times. In both cases, the persecutors were the agents of the official policy of the state - pagan in the Roman Empire, Islamic in Ottoman Turkey, atheistic communist regimes in the XX century. At the same time, images of New martyrs and initiatives for their canonization often have "national-patriotic" connotations, that is, they are directly related to the attempts of a particular national autocephalous church to comprehend the specificity of its historical path and mission.

4. Of course, we understand that these dates are quite conditional. It is obvious that the turning point, which in the public consciousness is marked with the number 1917, was rooted in events and social processes that took place much earlier, and the end of the Soviet era is more appropriate to date not 1991, but, say, 1988. The assumption of a public celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus, canonization, and idealization of pre-revolutionary Russia reveals the regime's denial of itself - or, in any case, doubts about its legitimacy. Against the background of the worn-out main Soviet ideologemes, discursive stamps and portraits of heroes, the images of pre-revolutionary Russia looked juicy and authentic even then (let's recall at least the 1992 film "Russia We Lost").

5. For an outline of the history of the canonization of saints in Russian Orthodoxy of the XX century, see: Semenenko-Basin I. V. Svyatost ' v russkoi pravoslavnoi kul'tury XX veka. Istoriya personifikatsii [History of Personification], Moscow: RSUH Publishing Center, 2010.

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The canonization of new martyrs in the ROC-MP has become widespread over the past decade and a half, and now there are more than one and a half thousand such saints glorified for all-church or local veneration. So the second group, which we will mainly talk about, is definitely inferior to them in terms of quantity. We are talking about "blessed elders" - representatives of a certain type of holiness, which as a separate hagiographic phenomenon and object of Orthodox piety began to take shape in the second half of the XIX century and flourished to the full by the beginning of the present century, having as an ideal type the image of St. Matrona of Moscow.

Our reflections on death and holiness in the twentieth century are mainly based on reading a special kind of literature - the lives of saints. This literature, despite its apparent monotony, is actually quite diverse and diverse. For example, there are multi-volume hagiographic compendiums - Chetya Minei, which contain biographies of the exploits and miracles of saints, starting with the early Christian martyrs. These are quite "official" documents that are kept in the libraries of theological schools and large cathedrals and can be used in liturgical practice. Another type of official hagiographic texts is the materials of the work of canonization commissions, which form the basis of documents of church councils that make decisions on the canonization of new saints. But, in addition, there are numerous thin books that can be purchased for a small price both in a church shop and in a completely secular bookstore. These books are often written in simple language, intended for the general reader, and contain information and considerations that, from the canonical point of view, are, to put it mildly, indisputable. The corpus of hagiographic sources should also include such modern media of hagiographic information as documentaries and television programs.

Although we usually present the lives of saints in the form of frozen texts, in which the image of the saint takes on static forms, a necessary condition for honoring a saint, even a long-dead and glorified one, is incessant hagiographic creativity. If the saint is still loved by his admirers and, therefore, is important for the current religious life, the publication of "old" lives will include his new posthumous miracles. In addition, the dynamism of hagiography as a re-

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the religious-artistic process manifests itself in the fact that already known elements of the hagiographic narrative can be reinterpreted, and as a result, hitherto unrealized shades appear in the literary portrait of the saint. Thus, changes in hagiography, both at the level of subjects and at the level of their interpretation, determine the forms of veneration of saints, that is, the motives for which believers resort to their intercession, ways of communicating with saints and their representatives in this world, etc. 6 That is, the hagiological portrait of a saint depends on the actual needs of believers - "today's concerns." But in addition, what will be written about a particular Christian ascetic depends on the information about him available to the hagiographer, that is, the person who took up the task of creating a new literary icon or updating an existing one.

It is clear that hagiography, on the one hand, and the practice of venerating a saint, on the other, are in a complex relationship, both functional and logical. For example, the Orthodox practice of canonization presupposes the following logic: in order to be glorified by the Church, a saint must already be an object of pious veneration, and there must be evidence of this. Therefore, it is precisely the practice of referring to a still-living or already deceased ascetic that leads to the appearance of those testimonies of miracles that will be reflected in his life or materials for compiling the life submitted to special commissions for canonization. It is these testimonies that will contribute to his beatification as a saint. But sometimes we can safely say that hagiographic works not only reflect the established cult of the saint, but also actively participate in its formation, popularizing, or even initiating it, and turning it from a narrow-local to a church-wide one.

This was the "spiritual career" of Matrona of Moscow: in 1993, the publishing house of the Novo-Golutvin monastery near Moscow published her "proto-life" - collected memoirs of several people who knew her; in the late 1990s, the future saint came to the attention of influential church figures, and in 1998 her relics were transferred

6. You can read about the work of the institutionalized mediation mechanism between the widely revered Saint Xenia the Blessed in our article: Kormima Zh. V., Shtyrkov S. A. Letters of believers as advertising: "National reception" of St. Xenia of St. Petersburg//Anthropological Forum. 2008. N9. pp. 154-185.

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from the Danilovsky cemetery to the Pokrovsky Convent, which was being restored at that time, canonization was then carried out, and on the basis of the above-mentioned memoirs, brought into line with the requirements of hagiographic literary etiquette and hagiological norms, her "official" life was written.7
For the glorification of the saint, not only administrative resources can be used, as was the case with St. Matrona, but also other power resources. Sometimes the canonization project is based on hagiographic creativity and the initiative of one person who has the skill to create written texts and access to the publishing industry. Such people are Orthodox local historians and journalists, professionals or amateurs working in provincial media. However, not only in the provinces - the first book, which collected stories about several modern old women of the "Mother of the Russian Land", was written by an employee of the Moscow magazine "Literary Study" and published in the publishing house of this magazine, 8 and the author of works about the old woman schemonakhina Makariya and an energetic popularizer of her veneration Gennady Durasov began as a specialist in folk culture. He also once wrote quite academic, though not devoid of patriotic sentimentality, essays on the Kargopol clay toy, the village ditto, etc. 9

Can we assume that modern saints are created solely by the creative imagination of the authors of hagiographic literature? In general, we tend to answer this question positively. But this definite answer requires very important reservations, which can radically change our attitude to the question of the authorship of practices and texts that make up the living fabric of the veneration of new saints. And here it should be borne in mind that when discussing these plots, we still have to distinguish between two plans - practices and narratives, at least analytically, that is, conditionally, since an unbiased reader should understand that

7. For more information, see: Kormina Zh. V. Political characters in modern hagiography: how Matrona Stalin blessed // Anthropological Forum. 2010. N12.

8. Ilinskaya A. Matushki zemli russkoy [Mothers of the Russian Land]. Spiritual essays on Orthodox ascetics of this century, Moscow: Literaturnaya ucheba, 1994.

9. Hagiographic texts about Mother Makariya were published many times. See, for example: Durasov G. P. God-given. Biography of the blessed elder Schema-nun Makariya. St. Petersburg: Satis, 1994.

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stories about the saint, their compilation, transmission, reading and listening are also religious practices, along with prayer addresses, pilgrimages and akathist chants. 10
As for the practices, the author of the hagiography focuses to one degree or another on the extra-textual empirical texture directly related to the represented cult. In other words, behind his story, and in the story itself, there is always a texture that the reader can check in principle - revered shrines associated with the life and death of the hero of the hagiography (this is primarily the place where he is buried); other people who witnessed his exploits or at least their memories; and, according to the author of the book, there are Of course, we understand that all this can be used by the author of the life as he wants, but still, elementary common sense and knowledge of general conventions for providing information put natural limits on his creative freedom.

Perhaps an even more serious system of restrictions and guidelines that define the hagiographic narrative is the hagiographic literary tradition, which at the same time relies on the existing canon and strives to meet the changing expectations and discursive habits of the audience over time. In other words, the text of the hagiography should be recognized by its readers as hagiographic, and its main character should look and behave like a saint in this narrative. In practice, the world of the hagiographic canon is not so simple-

10. A hagiographic work, a book, can become not only an informational but also a material intermediary between the saint and his potential worshipper. Here is an introduction to the description of the posthumous miracle of one of the new blessed old women - schema-nun Maria (Matukasova) (also known as Maria of Samara): "Once in the church I learned about the blessed schema-nun Maria Ivanovna Matukasova and wrote a book about her by mail. I received the book on January 29, 2002. When I opened the package and saw the image of the Great Old Woman, tears welled up in my eyes. Reading the book was also accompanied by tears and great excitement. I wanted to read the book faster, but at the same time I didn't want it to end. In short, everything I learned made a very strong impression on me, and I went to the temple." When is the author of the letter Olga Medzhidova from Buguruslan (although the choice of some speech turns and the general style of the letter suggest that the author of articles and a book about Mother Maria, the Samara journalist A. E. Zhogolev (A. Zhogolev), is related to the creation of this text? Blessed Schema-nun Maria. Ryazan: Zerna, 2006) began to tell her friend about the impression of the book, then she saw "behind the temple, in the east, against the background of a solid gray canvas, a golden glow in the form of a crown" (Holy Mothers and ascetics of the Russian land in the XX century shone. Николаев: "Літопис". 2010. pp. 179-180).

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cliches and common places in it leave enough space for individual author's creativity, as well as for the growth of old images that fall into a changing historical context, with new meanings. The lives of the blessed elders are a very illustrative example of how these mechanisms work. Below, we will discuss how these hagiographies implement well-established narrative schemes and create new ones.

As we have already written, there is every reason to speak of a new type of Orthodox holiness that has developed over the past century and a half - the blessed elders.11 These are women who have two special qualities-the gifts of "spiritual reasoning and insight" 12-and, accordingly, have two roles - a spiritual mentor and a consultant-assistant in complex everyday affairs. You can get an idea of the first function using an example from the life of the Michurinsky old woman schema-nun Seraphim. One of her admirers tells about her friend who wanted to go with her

... to my mother and kept asking: "When will you take me with you?" I asked my mother for her blessing to bring her, but she said, " No, I'm too old to receive people." When I got back, I told my sister about all this, and she burst into tears: "What should I do, perish? As long as I go to church, I've never seen the elders. " 13
The heroine of the story directly connects the question of the posthumous fate of her eternal soul with the presence of a spiritual mentor - in this case, she sees in this role the spiritual patron of her friend ("sister") and, we add, achieves what she wants: "and Mary became my mother's child" 14. However, to a much greater extent, the reputation of the blessed old woman depends on, how it is executed-

11. The question of how the image of the old woman relates to the image of the elder is complex and deserves a separate discussion. For some thoughts on this topic, see: Kormina, J. V. (2013) " Canonizing Soviet Pasts in Contemporary Russia: The Case of Saint Matrona of Moscow", in M. Lambek and J. Boddy (eds.) A Companion to Anthropology of Religion, pp. 409 - 424. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

12. A rather succinct description of the feat of the blessed old women can be found in the life of Mary of Old Russia: see Holy Mothers and Ascetics of the Russian land in the XX century shone forth. P. 379.

13. Ibid., p. 253.

14. Ibid., p. 254.

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it has a different function - a helper and adviser, who is turned to by different people, not necessarily her "spiritual children", in difficult life situations. This is how this aspect of the activities of one of the most famous old women today is described in the documentary "The Chosen One of the Queen of Heaven":

And people kept going to Temkino. Rejected by the indifference of official medicine, they waited for deliverance from their oppressive ailments through the prayers of the blessed elder. And she received everyone, instructing them to reinforce her prayer with their own. "Read Our Father and Rejoice to the Virgin Mary," she said. "Confess and receive communion , and then you will be healed." She was the one who made amends for their sins and took upon herself all their mental and physical illnesses. Only God's special grace helped schemamonk Makariya to carry this incomparable burden.15
By the way, the idea that the old woman takes on herself and, suffering, bears other people's problems, worries and sins, is one of the typical places of such stories.

"She's already dead to the world..."

However, these functions, which are presented in detail and consistently in the lives of old women, do not yet make them saints of a special category. In the portrait of a typical old woman, there is always a sign of special marking, which in lay language would be called a disease, mental or physical. With insanity, even if it is imaginary, the situation is more or less clear: in this case, the blessed old women inherit the traditions of the holy fools for Christ's sake. The only canonized holy fool of the Russian Orthodox Church, St. Blessed Xenia of Petersburg, who lived in the XVIII century, in the information space of modern veneration of saints, turns out to be a couple to the recently canonized and relatively recently deceased Matrona of Moscow, who is also called the blessed one. Their lives are often published under the same cover, paired icons are written, and outside the church world proper, they appear as patronesses of two capitals, respectively.-

15. The chosen one of the Queen of Heaven. Documentary film about the great ascetic of our time schemonachina Makariya (Artemyeva, 1926-1993), dir. Klavdiya Khoroshavina. 2009. MOST-TV.

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chestvennitsy, friends and, to some extent, competitors. That is, the mysterious speech of the blessed, their tendency to strange actions, the meaning of which is revealed only after some time-this is a significantly rethought, but still recognizable legacy of the hagiographic canon of holy fools.16
The innovation of hagiographic works about new elders lies in the emphasized physicality of the images of these saints. First, many, if not most, old women were, in modern parlance, people with special needs, or simply-disabled people. This initially draws the reader's attention to the state of their body and sets a special frame for the reception of the hagiographic narrative. The second striking feature that characterizes the hagiographic portraits of blessed old women is the presence of some physical characteristics, in particular, a special bright smell, which makes the physical dimension of their appearance even more convincing. On the one hand, all this is undoubtedly connected with the general trend of modern hagiography - to show saints as characters that are close in cultural and material space to their real and potential admirers. On the other hand, this compelling, not necessarily positive, physicality of the saint communicates the material presence of holiness that Robert Orsi, following Peter Brown, calls presence17. One can hear or smell the warmth and smell of grace and thus experience direct contact with the transcendent. Usually, such contact is considered possible only through a mystical experience available to selected "religious virtuosos". In the new hagiography, the elitist mystical experience is replaced by the functioning of the senses that is characteristic of any person.

If we open any of the compendiums devoted to modern holy women, we will find that almost all of them suffered from various serious illnesses, congenital or acquired at an early age. Matrona Moskovskaya was born blind, completely without eyes, and another Matrona, Anemnyasevskaya, became blind at the age of seven.

16. Ivanov S. A. Blazhennye pokhaby: kul'turnaya istoriya yurodstva [Blessed pokhabs: cultural history of foolishness]. Moscow: Yazyki slavyanskoi kul'tury, 2005.

17. Orsi, R. A. (2008) "Abundant History: Marian Apparitions as Alternative Modernity", Historically Speaking 9 (7): 12 - 16.

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transferred smallpox. Schema-nun Makariya (Artemyeva) lost her legs in early childhood, and spent most of her life sitting or lying on the bed. Since the age of fifteen, Blessed Lyubushka of Ryazan was "in a state of relaxation", that is, she was paralyzed. The list can go on, adding new names, but the diagnoses will remain mostly the same-paralysis and blindness.

Of course, for the Christian experience, pain and physical suffering are not unusual or surprising - it is filled (or even defined) by the sufferings of Christ, the tortures of the martyrs, which are reflected not only in their lives, but also in iconography, where they are depicted with instruments of torture and affected body parts - for example, with their own eyes on a platter in St. Paraskeva's hand, as well as stigmata and extreme forms of asceticism - the nakedness of holy fools and the hunger of hermits. And it cannot be said that the" old " saints were not sick - they were sick, and some found salvation through this. Thus, one of the Kiev-Pechersk fathers, Pimen Mnogobolodny, a hero of the Old Russian patericon, known exclusively for his humility in the face of serious illnesses, said: "It is better for me to turn into a corpse in this life, so that my body will be incorruptible in that one; it is better to endure the stench here, so that I can enjoy the ineffable fragrance there."18
Christian literature explores the phenomenon of disease not only through hagiographic narrative, but also through theological reflection. The theodicy of bodily ailment arises as an answer to the question: why does the Lord send diseases to a person? To this question, ecclesiastical and near-ecclesiastical literature provides a simple and convincing answer - for punishment or admonition. But why does the Lord send sickness to someone who is already pious and does not seem to deserve punishment? Generally speaking, the correct answer to this question is known from the Lord's conversation with Job: "Do you want to overthrow my judgment, accuse me in order to justify yourself?" (Job 40: 3). that is, " Are you sure you have the right to question me about the cause of your suffering?" However, the answers formulated in a slightly different modality are of great practical value: diseases are sent to the pious Christian to test his faith and purify his soul19, that is, he gets enough-

18. Dimitri Rostovsky. The Lives of Saints, vol. 13: August, Moscow: TERRA-Knizhny klub Publ., 1999, p. 85.

19. And this statement can be found in the Scripture: "Therefore, as Christ suffered in the flesh for us, arm yourselves with the same thought.

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This is the lot of Job the Long-suffering. Or another option is possible, which in practice does not exclude the first: a serious illness is sent to a person in order to show the glory of God to the world through the future recovery of the sick person.20 Similarly, before his death, Pimen of Many Diseases miraculously recovers in order to receive communion, indicate to the brethren the place of his repose, and then pass away there, that is, go to a place where "there is no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing, but endless life."

However, in the case of the blessed elders, their ailments do not imply a cure and do not help in spiritual growth. Physical infirmities in our case fix, so to speak, their special status-a saint in life. Having a serious illness and suffering from it is already a convincing proof of the sanctity of the ascetic. Illness is not an ordeal that can be overcome with dignity; it is an obvious sign that a person who has not yet known death belongs to the world of heaven.21
Let's see how this manifests itself at the level of the internal logic of the narrative. The description of the first miracle in the life of Matrona Anemnyasevskaya is constructed as follows: a blind and paralyzed Matrona is asked for help by a fellow villager, commenting on his decision as follows::

"Matryosha, this is how you've been lying for several years, you're probably pleasing to God. My back hurts, I can't cut. Touch your back, maybe it'll get away from you." What should I do, I was treated - doctors don't help." Matrona fulfilled his request - the back pain really stopped 22.

he ceases to sin in the flesh, so that the rest of his time in the flesh may no longer live according to the lusts of men, but according to the will of God" (1 Pet 4:1-2).

20. See about this: About temptations, sorrows, illnesses and consolation in them: [Collected from the works of the Holy Fathers and ascetics of piety]. Moscow: Pilgrim, 1994.

21. A completely different approach to understanding the physical disability of blessed old women is proposed in the book of priest Alexander Shantaev. He explains the veneration of new crippled saints as "the great fatigue of a nation that broke down in the exhausting conquest of peaks", which, given the rather long history of this practice, puts the reader in front of a serious question: when did this daring assault begin? The Blessed Saints are cripples in modern hagiographic literature. Consideration of the main typological features, Moscow: Blagod, 2004, p. 70.

22. The Holy Mothers and Ascetics of the Russian Land who shone forth in the XX century, p. 370.

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In another hagiography, the saint's sudden illness is directly related by the authors of the narrative to the miraculous abilities she displayed:

One day an old woman came to the house. Looking at Feodosia, she said in surprise:"What a little girl, and already walks." Then she patted her back. Immediately, the girl's knees buckled and she fell. Feodosia's legs got sick and, according to her mother, "she hasn't walked a drop since she was three." Thus began the many trials that had befallen her. But at the same time, a gift was revealed to her, something that great Christian ascetics received through long and persistent spiritual work - to heal and save.23
In other words, what came to others through Christian exploits came to little Feodosia (the future schema-nun Makariya) with illness.

An even more understandable sign of the blessed old woman's predilection for holiness is her blindness.24 The inability to see this world allows us to look into another world that is inaccessible to a simple sighted person - "into another spiritual dimension, where the dead come into contact with the living, where the inner eyes see what is hidden from the eyes of men" 25. On the other hand, in the hagiographer's imagination, blindness is related to the idea of holy ignorance:

Mother... I went blind at the age of six... For seventy years she had lived in childlike cleanliness, without seeing the filth of the world around her... For this purity, the Lord gave Matushka an extraordinary insight that amazed everyone who came to her.26
23. Given by God. Schema-nun Makariya. Directed by N. Shevchenko. 2004. ALS pro video studio.

24. It should be noted that the correlation between holiness and blindness in the hagiographic narrative is a rather new phenomenon, which is explained by the following circumstance: although the image of the blind seer is widespread in the world culture, there were no blind saints in Eastern Christian hagiography until then, or their holiness was not associated with this quality. The fact is that the Christian discursive tradition very closely links the concepts of blindness and unbelief, delusion, and godlessness (Mt. 15: 14; Lk. 6: 39; John 9: 39-41), which until relatively recently "blocked" the appearance of such hagiographic images.

25. The Holy Mothers and Ascetics of the Russian Land who shone forth in the XX century, p. 380.

26. Ibid., pp. 382-383.

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Lying flat all their lives or not seeing the white light, people are unwittingly associated with the world of death and cause not only pity, but also horror. In fact, such feelings are awakened in the reader by a small touch to the portrait of the blind old woman Polyushka Ryazanskaya: "She was small in stature, plump herself, with a handkerchief on her head and no pupils in her eyes."27. Doesn't it look like a shot from the movie "The Walking Dead"? And if we remember that only the deceased can be fully holy, we will not be surprised that hagiographers willingly, though perhaps not always consciously, resort to the" code of death " in order to indicate the special status of their heroes - living saints.

Quite predictably, the classic theory of Victor Turner comes to mind, according to which the status of an individual temporarily removed from the system of normal social relations is represented through the symbols of death-dying and resurrection. 28 In other words, a person in this liminal state is endowed with the qualities of the deceased: "liminality is often likened to death, uterine existence, invisibility, darkness, bisexity, desert, eclipse of the sun and moon " 29. And if the textbook young men from native tribes in the rites of initiation live this state as a temporary one, associated with the transition to a new social age, then for certain social groups or roles liminality is permanent.

The semiotic dimension of death always has a certain cultural morphological and functional specificity, and in the case of our living saints, it is usually indicated, as we see, through signs of blindness and real estate. We have already written about blindness and motor disorders as convincing signs of belonging to the world of death.30 According to folklore stories about the miraculous punishment of blasphemers, anyone who cuts an icon or throws bells from the bell tower of a parish church is inevitably broken by paralysis. Blindness is the punishment of the wicked who attempt to kill themselves.

27. Evsin I. V. Lamp of faith. Biography of blazh. Pelagia Zakharovskaya, Moscow: Zerna Publ., 2001.

28. Turner V. Symbol and ritual, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1983.

29. Ibid., p. 169.

30. Shtyrkov S. A. Legends about the foreign invasion: peasant narrative and landscape mythology (based on the materials of the North-eastern Novgorod region). St. Petersburg: Nauka Publ., 2012. On blindness: pp. 137-141, on motor damage: pp. 64-66.

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saint or shrine: here the" archetypal " figure is the blind persecutor of Christians, Saul, who regains his sight after repentance, receiving Holy baptism and receiving a new name. So for the Orthodox narrative tradition, these symbols are close and easy to read, although they can be used, depending on the context, "with different signs". However, if we are talking about modern hagiographic works, then the use of this semantic code looks rather archaic, folkloric, or, to use the expression of the well-known church publicist Fr.Andrey Kuraev, "too human"for a person who is used to traditional hagiographic literature. We are talking not only about the signs of liminality, through which the image of a living saint is revealed, but also about a special "corporeality", the material tangibility of his holiness, the description of which gives a special flavor to the hagiographic stories about the "blessed old women".

"Your old man stank"

The olfactory code of sanctity is traditional for hagiographic literature. In the hagiographies, a special unearthly fragrance is repeatedly indicated, which emanates from shrines and especially from the saints who have just passed away. The destruction of this topos is fraught with unbalancing the entire hagiological system (which F. M. Dostoevsky took advantage of in The Brothers Karamazov, which made his characters react painfully to the appearance of the spirit of corruption from the body of the deceased righteous)31.

Blessed old women are such saints who smell when they are alive. A strong heavy smell is a kind of" holy fool's trace " in the hagiography of modern old women (remember the custom of Old Russian holy fools to sleep in manure). One of their predecessors, who lived in the Serpukhov Vladychny Monastery at the beginning of the XIX century, was a former court lady "Dura Euphrosyne"

...my shabby cell... I've never cleaned it... The floor was littered with the remains of animal food, which was also being fed in a special trough on the floor in the cell... The air in the cell was warm

31. See about the interpretation of this episode: Bogdanov K. A. "Pernicious spirit" in Russian literature of the XIX century: (anti) aesthetics as a moral//Aromas and odors in Culture, 2nd ed., ispr. Kniga 2. / Comp. O. B. Vanshteyn, Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2010, pp. 121-126.

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terribly heavy. It was difficult for an ordinary person to breathe in this room.32
In response to the visitor's question about the terrible air and animals in the living room, the blessed one replied:: "This is a substitute for the perfume I used to wear so much at court." 33 Unlike the old women of the XX century, Euphrosyne has no physical deformities, can move around on her own and consciously makes a decision about cleanliness in her home-this is part of her feat of foolishness. The smells in her "cell" speak of a deliberate violation of the holy fool's rules, of blurring the line between pure and impure, in this case - human and animal, house and barnyard.

In general, how old women smell in life is rarely explicitly mentioned, the only case known to us is Blessed Natalia, who smelled like goats 34. But even the reader who does not have a strong imagination can easily imagine what smells filled the dwelling, for example, Evdokia Diveevskaya, who "lay on her bed for many years among half-eaten pieces of piled rags. The bread turned green, piles of crackers grew on the bed, cockroach whiskers and mouse tails flashed there. " 35 Of course, all this did not prevent the saint from burning with love for the Lord, and her visitors from seeking to meet her. It is interesting that the appearance of Blessed Natalia was predicted, according to her life, by Saint Seraphim of Vyritsky: "When Seraphim of Vyritsky went to the Lord... he said: after me there will be a woman who will smell " 36, as if passing the baton of seniority to a new generation-having a smell (he himself did not have strong smells, according to his biographies).

But, of course, the" main " fragrance of the old woman appears after her departure to eternal life, when instead of the natural smell of death, her flesh and even things begin to exude a fragrance, as is the case in the Orthodox world with relics and especially miraculous icons.

32. They denounced the madness of the world with imaginary folly. Blazhennye staritsy nashego vremya (XIX-XX vv.) [The Blessed Old Women of our Time (XIX-XX centuries)]. Moscow: Russian Chronograph, 2005, pp. 214-215.

33. Ibid., p. 215.

34. Belov V. N. My God, am I speaking correctly? St. Petersburg: B. I., 2011, p. 59.

35. Ilinskaya A. Matushki zemli russkoy [Mothers of the Russian Land]. Spiritual essays on Orthodox ascetics of this century, p. 116.

36. Belov V. N. My God, am I speaking correctly? P. 59.

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"Do you know, Valentin Nikolaevich," one of her admirers wrote to the author of the life of Blessed Natalia, who smelled of goats when she was alive, " how Matushka's vest smells during prayer, which is left to us from her? And especially when you pray not alone, but with someone. We will put candles, light lamps, pray, and immediately the vest will begin to smell sweet, so Natalia Mikhailovna is here and hears our prayers."37.

The fragrance comes, of course, from photographs of old women, and from the oil consecrated on their graves, and so on. 38 This fragrance (sometimes specified, for example, that it is the smell of roses) is an indisputable proof of the sanctity of the deceased. One can question the stories of a person's Christian exploits, but how can one argue with the smell?

The posthumous fragrance of an old woman is a logical part of the story that she, who had obvious signs of death during her life, on the contrary, retains - or acquires - signs of eternal life after death. Indeed, living saints seem to refuse to die. Their lives report the absence of physiological signs of death: "Despite the hot weather, the deceased lay in the coffin as if alive: there were no signs of decay, the coffin exuded a sweet fragrance; on the reverently calm face of the ascetic, unearthly bliss was reflected. " 39 Their presence can be felt not only through the aromas of grace; the old women invite their worshippers and spiritual children to come to their graves and share their sorrows, talk as if they were alive. Matrona of Moscow bequeathed to come to her at the Danilovsky cemetery in Moscow:

If anything happens to you, come to the grave, bend down, ask what you need , and I'll give you some advice. And always go to the cemetery when there's a need or something. Ask with all your heart, and I will help you. How did you receive Liu-

37. Ibid., p. 45.

38. " The myrrh flow of Mother's photographs began almost immediately after her righteous demise. In Diveyevo, Vera Lapkova had a myrrh-streaming and fragrant photo of Maria Ivanovna in the spring of 2000... Nun Elisaveta from Samara still has a small album of her Mother's photographs that smells wonderfully sweet to this day... Nun Eugenia had a very fragrant oil consecrated on the grave of the Old Woman, and her belongings." Holy Mothers... p. 185.

39. Ilinskaya A. Matushki zemli russkoy [Mothers of the Russian Land]. Spiritual essays on Orthodox ascetics of this century, p. 30.

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Day, I'll take it like that. Speak to me, tell me all your sorrows, and I will see and hear you; whatever I say to your soul, do it."

Conclusion

The saturation of the hagiographic text with references to the saint's corporeality and the increased naturalness of hagiographic images have at least two reasons. The first one is quite obvious : Russian Orthodox literature does not develop in isolation from secular literature, where naturalistic descriptions have become an important artistic technique. The memorable Alyosha Karamazov began a difficult path of doubt and search in response to the appearance of the smell of decay from the body of his deceased spiritual mentor, Elder Zosima. No matter how we interpret this episode, it is obvious that the spirit of the dead body in the cell of the newly deceased revered elder was inappropriate not only in itself, but also - for Dostoevsky it was important to emphasize - as a basis for judging the righteousness or unrighteousness of the deceased.

The second reason is related to the logic of the development of the hagiographic genre over the past century and a half. We are talking about attempts to create images of mass and national piety rooted in the national soil and, accordingly, people's saints. Hence the numerous attempts to find (or create) and legitimize a "popular" form of Orthodox asceticism. Here is a popular episode of the life of Matrona of Moscow, when Saint John of Kronstadt sees a very young Matronushka in the crowd of worshippers and points to her as his successor. In the film about Matrona, the following commentary is given to this story::

Other times were coming. Saint John of Kronstadt has repeatedly warned of the coming upheavals... Perhaps it was then that the great pastor discovered in the church that Russia would need not giants of the spirit, but such simple and pure souls as Matronushka. In the 20th century, they will be the spiritual support of Russia 41.

40. Ibid., p. 149.

41. " Blessed Matrona of Moscow: The Eighth Pillar of Russia " from the cycle "Holy Lands of Russia", Dir. Nelly Shevchenko, Russia: Kapellmeister-V. P. Kharchenko Charitable Foundation, 2006.

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However, at some point such images of folk saints become important, which would be sympathetic not only to the creators, but also to the addressees of mass hagiographic products. To achieve this goal, which is particularly relevant in the context of the existence of Orthodox communities in the hostile atheistic environment of the Soviet state, it was necessary to democratize the narrative genre, fill it with images, motives and indications of non-textual realities of religious life that would be if not close, then at least understandable to the "people". This creates images of new saints - pious righteous women of common origin who use dialect forms in their speech, habitually talk about the machinations of sorcerers and help people in everyday situations. At the same time, the authors of hagiographies sometimes get so carried away that they create such literary icons of saints that not only do not correspond to the established hagiology and contain implicit criticism of the church elite and canonical forms of Orthodox usage, but simply look wild for an enlightened representative of the church's intellectual elite.

Sometimes these dissonances are so blatant that the authors of the hagiographies have to make significant changes to the image of the saint. For example, the biographies of Matrona of Moscow and Pelagia of Ryazan were significantly changed in the direction of greater compliance with a certain standard, which implies loyalty to the main forms of church discipline sung in the lives of the righteous and compliance with a fixed social position.42 Thus, in the later (and official) version of the life of St. Matrona of Moscow, the "canonicity" of her act is emphasized-

42. The dissemination of materials about the life and utterances of Pelagia Riazanskaya, replete with "folklore" and anti-clerical images and motifs, has become a serious obstacle to the popularization and official recognition of her cult. See about it: Sibireva O. Modern priest and "Folk Orthodoxy". In: Religious Practices in Modern Russia. Edited by K. Rousselet, A. Aghajanyan, Moscow: New Publishing House, 2006. pp. 163-165; Kormima Zh. V. Political characters in modern hagiography: how Matrona Stalin blessed. pp. 9-10. As an attempt to "rehabilitate" the old woman Pelagia, we can consider the already quoted book by Igor Evsin and his later work: Evsin I. Polyushka Ryazanskaya: the tale of the blind righteous Pelagia Zakharovskaya. Church of All Saints in Krasnoe Selo, 2012. The editor and author of the preface to this publication was a well - known Moscow priest, Archpriest Artemy Vladimirov. In a special interview with Evsin published by Zerna, the arguments and rhetoric of fighters for restoring the reputation of Polyushka are presented, accusing the author of the "wrong life" of "spiritual charm" or mental inferiority:

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this statement, by the way, does not correspond to many episodes included in the same text); "Matrona warned not to run around the confessors in search of "elders" or "clairvoyants"; and finally, "In general There was nothing in Matrona's instructions that went against the patristic teaching. "43 It is obvious that these statements look like attempts to justify and protect one's saint from severe accusations from the church's" superiors."

Consistent attempts to create literary icons of new saints led to the fact that these saints began to resemble ordinary mortals. Hagiographers, deciding to violate genre conventions, allow their characters to be sometimes ordinary people. So Matrona, according to the legend rejected by the canonizers, who was not even afraid of the all-powerful Stalin, was afraid of death. This fear and everyday, undead fussiness in anticipation of the end of the earthly journey makes Matrona not a righteous person shining with the light of the upcoming eternal bliss, but a simple mortal (although she carried signs of belonging to the world of the dead all her life). She is somehow childishly worried about the most important event in her life. Perhaps that is why her last words can easily be included in a children's book without fear that they may frighten the little Orthodox reader.

Matronushka, like all people, was afraid of death. At the priest who came to give her communion, she anxiously asked if her hands were folded like that. My father was genuinely surprised:

"Are you afraid to die, too, Mother?"

"I'm afraid," the blessed old woman 44 answered meekly.

This carefully constructed simplicity, in turn, creates the image of a folk saint, referring to the perception of Orthodoxy as a religion rooted in the national tradition, artless and understandable to everyone.

Nikolsky V. Pelagia Zakharovskaya i ee pokhozhateli [Pelagia Zakharovskaya and her admirers]. http://www.zyorna.ru/news/CX/27-06.2012.

43. The Holy Mothers and Ascetics of the Russian Land who shone forth in the XX century. pp. 135-136.

44. Bozhiy svet v slepykh ochakh: Zhitie blazhennoy Matrony Moskovskoy dlya detey [God's Light in the blind eyes: The Life of the Blessed Matrony of Moscow for children].

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