Women in ancient Russia. The position of women in Ancient and Medieval Russia (IX - XVI centuries) The struggle for a monogamous family

Women are considered in chronicle sources mainly as a predicate of men, however, like children. That is why in Russia, before marriage, a girl was often called by her father, but not in the form of a patronymic, but in a possessive form: Volodimerya, and after marriage - after her husband in the same possessive form as in the first case; cf. turnover: husband's wife, i.e. owned by the husband.

Despotic orders, which became widespread in ancient Russian society, did not bypass the family either. The head of the family, the husband, was a serf in relation to the sovereign, but a sovereign in his own house. All household members, not to mention the servants and serfs in the truest sense of the word, were in his complete subordination. First of all, this applied to the female half of the house. It is believed that in ancient Russia, before marriage, a girl from a well-born family, as a rule, did not have the right to go beyond the parental estate. Her parents were looking for a husband, and she usually did not see him before the wedding.

After the wedding, her husband became her new "owner", and sometimes (in particular, in the case of his infancy - this happened often) and father-in-law. A woman could go outside the new house, not excluding church attendance, only with the permission of her husband. Only under his control and with his permission could she get to know anyone, have conversations with strangers, and the content of these conversations was also controlled. Even at home, a woman did not have the right to eat or drink secretly from her husband, give gifts to anyone or receive them.

In Russian peasant families, the share of female labor has always been unusually large. Often a woman had to take even a plow. At the same time, the labor of daughters-in-law, whose position in the family was especially difficult, was especially widely used.

The duties of the husband and father included "instructing" the household, which consisted in systematic beatings, to which the children and wife were to be subjected. It was believed that a man who does not beat his wife "does not build his own house" and "does not take care of his soul", and will be "destroyed" both "in this century and in the future." Only in the XVI century. society tried to somehow protect the woman, to limit the arbitrariness of her husband. So, "Domostroy" advised to beat his wife "not in front of people, to teach alone" and "do not get angry at all" at the same time. It was recommended “for any fault” (because of trifles) “don’t beat by sight, don’t beat with a fist, kick, or beat with a staff, don’t beat with any iron or wooden one.”

Such "restrictions" had to be introduced, at least as a recommendation, since in everyday life, apparently, husbands were not particularly shy about means when "explanating" with their wives. It was not for nothing that it was immediately explained that those who “beat like that from the heart or from the torment, have many parables from this: blindness and deafness, and the arm and leg will dislocate and the finger, and headache, and toothache, and pregnant wives (meaning they were beaten too!) and the child is injured in the womb.

That is why advice was given to beat a wife not for every one, but only for a serious offense, and not with anything and in any way, but "take off your shirt, politely (carefully!) Beat with a whip, holding hands."

However, a woman gained real freedom only after the death of her husband. Widows were highly respected in society. In addition, they became full-fledged mistresses in the house. In fact, from the moment of the death of the spouse, the role of the head of the family passed to them.

In general, the wife had all the responsibility for housekeeping, for raising children. younger age. Teenage boys were then transferred for training and education to "uncles" (in the early period, indeed, uncles on the maternal side - uyam, who were considered the closest male relatives, since the problem of establishing paternity, apparently, could not always be solved).

Introduction

1. General analysis sources regulating the legal status of women in Russia in the 9th-15th centuries. 13

1.1. Sources regulating the legal status of women in Russia in the 9th-15th centuries. 13

1.2. The legal status of women in Russia in the IX-XY centuries. in pre-revolutionary science 24

1.3. The legal status of ancient Russian women in Soviet and post-Soviet science 30

2. Legal status of women in the Old Russian state and society 34

2.1. The legal status of ancient Russian women in the economic, political and cultural spheres of life 34

2.2. Woman as a subject of a crime and an object of criminal encroachment 82

3 Legal status of a married woman 112

3.1. The procedure for concluding marriage in Russia 112

3.2. The position of a woman in marriage 141

3.3. Grounds for divorce, 158

Conclusion 176

List of references 184

Introduction to work

Relevance of the research topic. The legal status of a woman in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries, her social position, the content and essence of these concepts have long been of interest to scientists both from scientific and practical points of view.

L The problem of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries was of interest to scientists of both the pre-revolutionary period and scientists of the Soviet era, but this problem began to arouse particular interest with the advent of gender studies. The study of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries is closely connected with the development of the principle of legal equality. Recently, the problem under consideration in the work has become relevant in the light of new views on history and modernity and the emergence of the so-called " women's history”, which is in many ways opposed to the traditional “male story”.

The legal status of a woman at various stages of the development of society, including in the period from the 9th to the 15th centuries, has been studied by scientists for a long time, but there is no common understanding of this issue among specialists to this day. It should also be taken into account that the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries was practically not considered by lawyers, despite the fact that this topic is very important in assessing the law of the Russian Middle Ages. Therefore, this problem continues to be relevant, to a certain extent controversial, requiring additional research. Although in the field of history the issues of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries were studied in great detail, a number of reasons make us return to them:

firstly, in many works the problem of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries was covered only in passing (in works on the state structure of Ancient Russia, the development of medieval law, the rights of various social strata of Ancient Russia, etc.);

secondly, there is a long break in addressing the issue of the status of women in Russia during the period under review. For the first time, researchers turned to the problem of the status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th century at the dissertation level in the 70s of the XX century, and no further dissertation research was conducted in this area;

thirdly, almost all existing scientific works were written by historians, sociologists, but not lawyers, and the issues of the legal status of women in the period under review were practically not developed.

The above circumstances sufficiently indicate the need for a holistic study of the main problems of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th century in the field of the history of the state and law of Russia.

The study of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th century is extremely important for determining the main trends in the development of the legal capacity of women in Russia and the Russian Empire in a later period. The issues of the legal status of women do not lose their relevance in the assessment of feudal legislation in Russia, its main institutions.

The degree of development of the problem. The complex nature of the problems studied in the dissertation implies, in addition to studying the works of legal theorists, civilists, and working with sources of law, an appeal to the works of philosophers, historians of the pre-revolutionary period and the present. The use of various scientific literature in the dissertation leads to the need to systematize it into several groups: historical works devoted to the history of Ancient Russia; research by historians studying the situation of women in Ancient Russia, work on the development of property rights of various strata of society; literature consecrating hereditary rights; the works of authors analyzing the situation of medieval women in Western Europe. It should be noted that during the development of legal science among pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet researchers, the assessment of the legal status of women in Ancient Russia is ambiguous,

The history of the development of medieval society is described in great detail in pre-revolutionary and Soviet historiography. Over a long period of time, the efforts of domestic researchers N.M. Karamzin, S-M. Solovyova, N.I. Kostomarova, I.E. Zabelin were aimed at studying the general historical, economic, social aspects of ancient Russian society. The problems of the position of women remained the least studied, they were covered selectively, as a rule, they characterized representatives of the privileged classes who participated in the political and social life of ancient Russian society. In the pre-revolutionary period, V.I. Sergeevich, N.N. Debolsky, V.I. Sinaisky, K.A. Nevolin, A. Alekseeva, N. Aristova, M.M. Abrashkevich and others.

Over the past decades, there have been no scientific qualification works of jurists on this issue, with the exception of studies that affect certain issues of the legal status of medieval women in Russia and Western Europe: JLH. Pushkareva, VV. Momotova, V.A. Tsypina, T.B. Ryabova, M.JL Abramson, O.I. Varyash, G.M. Tushina. K. Opitz, A.I. Evstratova and others.

Therefore, it can be argued that this topic in legal science has not been sufficiently developed.

As an information base, normative acts of secular origin, mixed jurisdiction, canonical acts, acts of foreign states, as well as sources that can only conditionally be classified as normative, for example, customs, were studied.

The legal status of a woman in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries is reflected in the Russian Pravda, the Princely charters, the Novgorod and Pskov Judicial Charter, treaties with foreign states, treaties between princes, treaties between princes and the church. Taking into account the incomplete regulation of a number of issues by regulatory legal acts, in the course of the study, attention was paid to chronicles and birch bark writings. To conduct a comparative analysis, foreign legislative acts were studied.

Object of study. The object of the study is the system of social relations in which the woman of Ancient Russia in the 9th-15th centuries. acts as a subject.

Subject of study. The subject of the study is the concept of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th-15th centuries. In this SH dissertation research, the author reveals general issues of the legal capacity of women in Russia in the 9th-15th centuries, issues of property legal capacity, as well as the ability of women to act as a subject and object of criminal liability .

The purpose and objectives of this study. The aim of the work is a comprehensive analysis of the process of formation and subsequent evolution of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th century.

The choice of the period under study from the 9th to the 15th centuries is explained by the fact that during this period the formation of Russian medieval law in general and the legal status of women in particular takes place, since it cannot be revealed without characterizing marriage and family law, criminal, civil, inheritance law arising in considered. period.

To achieve the goal, the following tasks were solved:

To study all sources relevant to the topic we are considering, including both monographic works, articles in the periodical press, and ancient Russian primary sources of law related to secular, canonical and mixed jurisdiction, as well as other sources, thanks to which one can not only study normative acts, but also to determine the degree of their applicability in practice;

Conduct a study of the legal acts and customs of Byzantium and the countries of Western Europe of the period under review and, on their basis, conduct a comparative legal analysis of the legal status of women in Russia and their contemporaries in Western European countries;

To study the evolution of the position of women in Russia in the pagan and Christian periods in various spheres of life: social, cultural, political and economic;

To study the forms of marriage that existed in Russia in the pagan and Christian periods, and to identify the main patterns of dependence of women's property and personal rights on the form of marriage;

To identify the existence of the right to divorce among women in various forms of marriage and the main trends in the development of a woman's legal capacity in this area;

To reveal the differences in the amount of legal capacity of spouses in a pagan and "in a Christian marriage;

To explore the problems of legal relations that arise between parents and children in the Old Russian family and analyze the main features of the rights of married women and women guardians of children in the field of education and determining the fate of both minors and adult children;

Identify the main features of responsibility for committing various types of criminal offenses and other acts that violate the rights of women to the inviolability of their life, health and honor;

Analyze the process of attracting a woman as a subject of secular and ecclesiastical responsibility for committing illegal acts;

Determine the scope of the procedural capacity of a woman and the possibility of her participation in civil and criminal proceedings as a party, a witness or a person performing judicial functions or exercising control over the actions of the judiciary.

The methodological basis of the study was modern methods of cognition, including the method of structural and functional analysis, comparative legal, historical, formal legal methods, the method of systemic and complex problem solving. In the field of legal research, the method of dogmatic interpretation (grammatical, logical, systemic interpretation) was also used. , specific sociological method (analysis of legal normative acts and judicial practice) Taking into account the presence of gender aspects in our work, specific research methods were applied. The method of reflexive sociology of P. Bourdieu, used by genderists, turned out to be very attractive for research, according to which a given person occupies unequal positions in different hierarchies (he calls them “fields”)1. The daughter of an eminent boyar occupies the upper hierarchical level in relation to the peasants belonging to her by right of inheritance of the patrimony; but she can at the same time occupy a lower position in relation to her parents, who decide her fate for her, marry her off and subordinate her to her husband.

Scientific novelty is determined by the very formulation of the problem, since the present work is a comprehensive scientific study of the problems of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th to the 15th century according to the history of 1 BOURDIEU P. In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, Stanford, 1990.

state and law of Russia. Previously, the appeal of scientists to this topic was carried out within the framework of historical sciences and did not affect legal aspects.

Based on the study of literary sources, legal acts and the practice of their application, the paper proposes the main characteristics of the legal status of women in Russia in the 9th - 15th centuries.

The results of the study made it possible to formulate and substantiate the following provisions submitted for defense:

1. In Slavic society, by the beginning of the period under review, the position of women was high, and by the time the first legislative acts appeared, traces of matriarchy remained, which, due to socio-economic changes, with the separation of privileged classes and the negative influence of the Tatar-Mongol conquerors, were replaced by a patriarchal system of law.

2. The Christian Church had a significant impact on the position of women in the period under review, although it cannot be unambiguously assessed. Outwardly, the actions of the church were aimed at the exaltation of women and in many ways contribute to this, since the church carried out a fight against the remnants of paganism that humiliated a woman, such as polygamy, concubinage, marriage in the form of theft and buying a bride. At the same time, the church tried to drive every individual, both men and women, into certain social limits, subjecting the woman to the power of her husband and obliging the husband to take care of his wife and protect her. In this regard, we can conclude that the woman lost more than gained from the adoption of Christianity in Russia, because the church, depriving a woman of the opportunity to fulfill herself in public and political life, ultimately did not provide her with ways to independently protect her rights from men , under whose authority the church gave her, and the clergy could not protect the interests of women due to the fact that the privileged strata had significant power and did not want to give up full rights to a woman, and sometimes not to one, but the subordinate strata of society for a long time did not recognized the significance of the sacraments of the Church, and to a greater extent adhered to pagan traditions.

3, The property legal capacity of women was very significant in comparison with the legal capacity of their contemporaries in Western European states, but it cannot be considered equal to the legal capacity of a man, since a woman in a family was under the authority of her father or husband, and men could nullify all advantages with their power, provided for ancient Russian women in the legislation, In cases where a woman was not under the authority of a man, for example, being a widow, she had practically equal property legal capacity with men.

4. Old Russian procedural legislation did not provide for any restrictions for women in this area, and although in practice the participation of a woman in a trial as a witness or judge did not take place so often, this does not detract from their procedural capacity. In addition, it should be remembered that in a number of regions that have preserved economic and democratic traditions since ancient times, such as Novgorod and Pskov, a woman even had some procedural advantages, such as the opportunity, in cases provided for by law, to send her husband or son. A number of authors compare these rights with the right of privileged classes to send their servants to court instead of themselves.

5. When assessing the position of a woman as a subject of a criminal act and a person on whose interests a criminal encroachment is directed, it should be taken into account that the ancient Russian legislation did not provide for specifics depending on gender, the differentiation of responsibility depended on the woman's social affiliation. Based on these general principles, one should consider the correct assessment of the amount of compensation for the murder of a woman, which was equal to the payment for the murder of a man.

6. When considering the relationship between a woman and her children in an ancient Russian family, it can be argued that a mother was highly respected in ancient Russian society and her personal and property rights in relation to children were not legally limited either at the time of her marriage or after death spouse, except in the case of remarriage.

7. In general, when analyzing the legal acts of Ancient Russia from the 9th to the 15th century, the legal status of a woman can be assessed as equal to that of a man, but taking into account law enforcement practice, it should be concluded that a woman occupied a lower position. This was primarily due to the fact that the ancient Russian state, while granting women rights in the personal, property and procedural spheres, did not develop mechanisms for protecting these rights and left it at the mercy of men. Only in the case when a woman got out of the power of men, her family, a woman could take a leading position in society, and this gave her the opportunity to fully enjoy the rights granted by the state and realize herself as a full-fledged person.

The practical significance of the work. The results of the study can be used to further develop theoretical problems of the history of state and law, in the process of improving our understanding of legislation and other sources that regulated the situation in Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries. The provisions of the work can be applied in the process of teaching the courses "History of State and Law", as well as special courses, in higher educational institutions.

Approbation of work. The dissertation was discussed at the Department of State History and Law of the Stavropol State University.

The main provisions and results of the study are reflected in published articles, speeches at scientific and practical conferences in various higher educational institutions of the country. Separate provisions of the dissertation were presented at the All-Russian Scientific Conference and Summer Youth School, held at the Armavir State Pedagogical University, in Slavyansk-on-Kuban? at the 5th International Multidisciplinary Conference of Young Scientists and Students, held at the Samara State Technical University, at conferences held at the Armavir Orthodox Social Institute.

Sources regulating the legal status of women in Russia in the 9th-15th centuries

The legal regulation of the position of women in Ancient Russia in the period from the 9th to the 14th centuries was carried out by normative acts of secular origin, mixed jurisdiction, canonical acts, as well as sources that can only conditionally be classified as normative in which the requirements for a person were deprived of strict obligation, but in At the same time, they were a desirable model, an ideal, for example, customs.

In the first millennium of our era, customs were formed among the Eastern Slavs, that is, stable rules of behavior. Gradually, part of the customs began to be provided with mandatory enforcement by tribal bodies and communities and acquired the qualities of customary law. Some of the norms of customary law were enshrined in the state written legislation, revealing greater vitality, some were modified or prohibited by law. Some elements of customary law in the field of regulating the legal status of women were preserved in the peasant environment until the 19th century.

The legal status of women in ancient Russia from the 9th to the 15th centuries. in addition to legal customs, it was regulated both by secular normative acts and by the norms of church law. Secular monuments allow us to speak with greater certainty about the socio-economic aspects of the problem of law, while church monuments more clearly characterize the norms of morality, morality, the specifics of attitudes towards women on the part of society, family, state and church.

Among the secular normative acts, the most valuable source is the document of the all-Russian, and from the XIV centuries. of national jurisdiction, -Russkaya Pravda - Russkaya Pravda - the oldest Russian collection of laws - was formed during the 11th-12th centuries, but some of its articles have roots in the language of legal customs. Russkaya Pravda contains, among other things, provisions on the inheritance of women and therefore is a valuable source of law regulating the legal status of a woman of the period under review, since it is simply impossible to talk about the legal status of a woman without establishing her ability to acquire property of her kind or her family by inheritance. Conducting a comparative analysis of the norms of Russian Truth, devoted to the issues of the inheritance of women, the norms of church law and the norms of foreign states of that time, D. Belyaev points out: Roman law". The norms of Russian Truth, which reflected the family and domestic relations of the period of early feudalism, including the property rights of spouses, were further enshrined in the legislative monuments of the feudal republics.

Treaties between Russia and Byzantium in the 10th century, monuments of foreign policy relations between Novgorod, the Galicia-Volyn principality and other Russian lands in the 12th-13th centuries. complement the information of all-Russian legal codes. There are direct indications of the existence in the 10th century of the “Russian law” in the treaties between Russia and Byzantium. These treaties were concluded in the 9th-10th centuries, when Russia had extensive trade and diplomatic contacts with the Eastern Roman Empire to resolve issues related to the definition of the rights and jurisdiction of Russian subjects on the territory of the empire.

A number of researchers, considering the sources of the inheritance law of Ancient Russia, which regulate the problems of women's inheritance, raise the question “Do we have the right to look at Russian Truth as the first monument of Russian positive inheritance law? Is there an older monument that we shouldn’t bypass?”3 P. Tsitovich gives a very specific answer to the question he himself posed: and especially the first of them (911)”4. When characterizing Oleg's treaties with feks as a source regulating the property status of a woman, one should also take into account the opinion of V. Shulgin: “The widow from time immemorial was provided with some part of her husband's property, which probably consisted of a dowry and a vein. The inviolability of this widow's part ... is guaranteed in Oleg's agreement with the Greeks "5

The legal status of ancient Russian women in the economic, political and cultural spheres of life

It is possible to assess the various rights and obligations of ancient Russian women in a complex through such a concept as a legal position, since it reflects various aspects of the legal life of a particular subject of law. In our work, the legal status of an Old Russian woman is considered as “a legally fixed position of an individual in society”45. NI, Matuzov in his work thus gives the concept of legal status, but at the same time indicates that these concepts are equivalent. Other opinions have been expressed in the scientific literature, for example, Vitruk, V.A. Kuchinsky47 V.A. distinguish between the legal status and the legal status of the subject, considering the legal status as more general concept. Such a view on this issue does not contradict the main concept of our work.

One of the most important aspects in the analysis of the legal status of women in Russia from the 9th - 15th centuries. is the question of a woman's ability to act as the owner of property, as well as the subject of civil law transactions. This problem is very important not only because, within the framework of my research, it shows the evolution of property legal capacity in Russia in the period under review, but also, first of all, because without familiarizing myself with the legal acts that lay at the origins of the consolidation of the main provisions of Old Russian family and inheritance law, as well as regulations that provide for liability for property crimes in the family and household sphere, it is impossible to trace the main trends in the development of the unequal position of women in the family and property sphere at further stages of the development of Russian society.

The position of a woman in ancient Russian law was much higher than in ancient German and Roman, in the face of which a woman, daughter, wife, mother always needed a guardian and did not have legal capacity. AT Kievan Rus, on the contrary, a woman in marriage retained all her property, which, even after the death of her husband, was not included in the common inheritance: the widow became the full head of the family: “If the wife remains a widow after the death of her husband, then give her part of the property, and what he gave she has a husband during her lifetime, she is left with more than that ... ”48 Own property began to appear, apparently, very early with the decomposition of large clans into separate single-dwelling families and the emergence of trade. Due to the fact that trade has already contributed to the emergence of a wealthy class, and women could have personal property, prominent historians of ancient Russian law insist on this.49

Even in ancient Russia, women had the right to dowry, inheritance and some other property. Even in the pre-Christian period, wives had their own property, princesses and other noble women owned large fortunes, cities, villages. Thus, “Princess Olga owned her own city, her own places for bird and animal catching.”50 Husbands often depended on their wives for property. Such a "property emancipation" was not allowed by any European legislation. In this regard, we need to analyze the legal acts of the 1X-XV centuries. and to determine whether such a situation was rare or the rule. It should be noted that the most famous examples from the history of ancient Russia, characterizing the situation of such women as Princess Olga, who carried out a financial reform in Russia, Russian princesses who married foreign rulers, cannot be assessed as a rule, but they also give a certain idea of ​​the situation. women of that time. It should be borne in mind that the ancient acts do not contain the slightest indication that the wife was in any way limited in the right to dispose of her property.

A woman, even a married woman, had the right to own property in her own name. The Olaf saga testifies that the Russian princesses even had their own separate army, which they kept at their own expense. This is confirmed by the Russian epic; the wife of Prince Vladimir, Princess Aprakseevna, even competed with her husband in this case and wanted to recruit more brave and strong heroes into her squad. Not only noble, but also ordinary women had a certain economic independence. In birch bark letters we see many examples when women freely dispose of large in cash and property, women spent money, inherited property or lent it. There are enough examples of this in birch-bark letters: syaroshkova's wife was on the list of debtors, having owed someone 9 veksh (letter no. 228); Efimya paid off half a ruble to someone (letter No. 328; Smolig’s wife paid a fine of 20 hryvnias for her husband (letter No. 603), etc. ”

.The order of marriage in Russia

To analyze the legal status of women in Russia in the 9th-15th centuries. it is necessary to characterize the family law of the period under review and those legal acts that regulated the issues of marriage, divorce, personal and property relations between spouses and other members of the Old Russian family. Due to the specifics of ancient Russian life, for most of her life, a woman of the X-XV centuries. spent in the family- Therefore "to consider the legal and social status of a woman, it is necessary to characterize the family in which she lives, to dwell on the position of a married woman, since women, moving from one family to another, acquired a completely new status in Ancient Russia, In their In his work P. Tsitovich in 1873 writes: "... a girl has no place in her family - a wife needs to be obtained from a strange family - this is the formula for the position of a woman not only in ancient, but also in modern law." S.S. Shashkov also points to the impossibility of considering the history of women without touching on issues of the family and family relationships. He writes that the emancipation of women is closely connected with the reform of the family institution.

Due to the poverty of ancient sources, the pagan family has been studied rather poorly. testify to the presence of polygamy and disorderly cohabitation of relatives - the Slavs had two, even three and four wives: "... without shame and shame for a wife to have." Arabic sources of the 9th-10th centuries. they say that the Rusyns had several wives and concubines. Before the adoption of Christianity, Vladimir I kept many wives and concubines in the villages. V. Makushev, analyzing the legends of various foreign authors, concludes that, according to foreigners, monogamy prevailed among the Slavs, although polygamy was also allowed; in the latter case, however, the number of wives was limited; for an alliance with them, it was necessary to observe marriage customs, which, naturally, was not required in relation to concubines, the number of which was indefinite. It is not known whether polygamy was available to the common people, but for the princes it was permissible in a later period. Taking into account the small prosperity among the people in the old days, it is fashionable to think that polygamy, however, was not very common among our ancestors; only princes and wealthy people had a significant number of wives, and many concubines were kept with their wives. because among the ancient Germans and Slavs, as is known, separate clans were united through marriages, a constant connection began between them, they became related.

The chronicles say that a monogamous family has already developed among the Polyans, while other Slavic tribes: Rodimichi, Vyatichi, Krivichi still retained polygamy. Here is how the original chronicle describes the form of marriage: “... And Radimichi, and Vyatichi, and the north, there is one custom for the name: I live in the forest, like any beast, eating everything unclean, and shameful words in them before the father and before the daughters-in-law, and brothers I have not been in them, but playing games between the villages, similar to games, to dancing and to all demonic songs, and to that wily of my wife, who is talking with her; the name of the same two and three wives. According to the assumption of V. N. Tatishchev, in Russia X-XV centuries. there was no vestige of a group marriage, in accordance with which the prince was granted the right of the “first night”, he was, in his opinion, replaced by monetary compensation by Princess Olga, who introduced a marten fee in favor of the prince (“. ."), which freed the groom from the obligation to give the bride to the prince. An important factor for characterizing the position of a woman in the family and in society is the form of marriage. This is not accidental, since the position of a woman who enters into new family as a “thing” bought from her parents or other persons, and the position of a woman who brings certain property to a new family in the form of a dowry, which is never completely dissolved in the property of her husband’s family, and reminds her of her once independent position, cannot be equal, In this regard, one cannot but agree with the statement of V.O. Shulgin: “The sale and purchase of a wife destroys the personality of a woman, turning her into an object of bargaining, into a simple thing; the dowry, on the contrary, elevates the woman: it gives her, as a person, the right to own a thing, becomes the personality of a woman, expressed in the outside world.

The history of the family in Russia, despite the growing interest in this topic, remains unwritten 1 . A review of historiography, made in the work of N. A. Gorskaya, shows that the focus of historians was the dispute about the relationship between large and small families 2 . N. A. Gorskaya noted the absence of works on the ideas of Russian society about marriage, childbearing, and death 3 . The study of this topic rose to a new level thanks to the works of Ya. N. Shchapov, who published and analyzed ancient Russian legal monuments concerning family relations four . A significant step forward in the study of this topic was the work of N. L. Pushkareva and her doctoral dissertation “A woman in a Russian family X - early. 19th century Dynamics of socio-cultural changes” 5 .

The difficulty for historians is the specificity of the sources that make it possible to judge the inner life of the family and the place of a woman in the Russian family. The position of a woman in the family is determined not so much by laws as by custom. The surviving documents fix, as a rule, only violations of the norms, and not the norms themselves.

The adoption of Christianity had a very strong impact on the Old Russian family, but this does not mean that Christian norms were assimilated. As the researcher of Russian law M. F. Vladimirsky-Budanov wrote, “Christian law, borrowed from Byzantium, recognized the former, pagan family order as contrary to Christianity.” It would seem that in the event of the abolition of the custom by law, this latter should immediately stop all action. “In fact, what happened was not that, but the following: in no area of ​​law did customs prove to be so vital or tenacious as it was in the family sphere. Not only in the previous long centuries after the adoption of Christianity, pre-Christian customs did not succumb to extermination, but they live in our days in the form of family rituals.

As Vladimirsky-Budanov's study showed, customs differ even within the same chronological period both in different social groups and in different regions. And what is very important custom can be reborn i.e., the old norm remains, but acquires a completely different meaning, being reflected at times and in its pure form 7 . So an unmarried marriage in society is first recognized along with a wedding one, then it degenerates into a second, so to speak, subsidiary form of marriage, without nevertheless passing into the category of criminal acts: in such a marriage, breaking the connection with an unmarried wife is always possible and easy 8. The historian is not always able to identify changes in the content of institutions designated by the same terms.

The history of Russian family law was given attention in the works of lawyers: K. A. Nevolin 9 , K. P. Pobedonostsev, M. F. Vladimirsky-Budanov 10 .

Already in the work of K. A. Nevolin “The History of Russian Civil Laws”, a separate book was devoted to “family unions”, 11 which has not lost its significance even today. Among latest works it is necessary to indicate the work of N. S. Nizhnik 12 . A feature of the study of family history in Russia is that lawyers and ethnologists do not pose the problem of historical change. For ethnologists, this is something unchanged in all eras. In the work of V. Yu. Leshchenko, “The Family and Russian Orthodoxy”, rich in factual material, quotations from the authors of the 11th century. interspersed with ecclesiastical authors of the 20th century, and the question of changing the views of Church leaders and their influence on society is not raised, although the author is imbued with a “class” approach 13 . The history of the Russian family inevitably breaks up into the history of the family in separate estates, but remains unwritten.

Of interest is the study of M. K. Tsaturova "Russian family law of the XVI-XVIII centuries ...". On the basis of the act material, M.K. Tsaturova concluded that there were significant changes in Russian legislation on the property rights of a wife: “From freedom in the disposal of property at the beginning of the 16th century. to complete dependence on her husband from the second half of the 16th-17th centuries, and finally, to independence and separation of property in the 18th century, which was preserved by law. At different times, spouses had different rights and social guarantees” 14 . The researcher notes that the attitude to the subordination of the wife to her husband remained unchanged. The conclusions of the researcher are, in our opinion, somewhat contradictory: “The scope of the wife's property rights did not affect her position in the family. Whether she had the right to dispose of her property or not, in each case she could be subjected to cruel treatment by her husband. It was difficult to seek protection from anyone, because the Church preached humility and patience, as well as Christian teaching. The acquisition by a woman of significant property rights allowed her to exist independently in marriage, on an equal footing with her husband to give children a dowry and participate in their upbringing. The mores of society still considered a woman to be subordinate to her husband, not only in the Christian, but also in the everyday sense. And yet, the economic and legal support of women in society was much more important than her everyday enslavement” 15 . Apparently, the contradiction is inherent in the material under study itself: while the attitude to the subordination of a woman to her husband was unchanged, there was an increase in the property rights of a woman. The position of women in the family was influenced by the legal and economic situation in society. However, in the Middle Ages one can hardly speak of the unity of this situation for different classes.

For the XVI-XVII centuries. there are a number of descriptions, both Russian and foreign, that speak of the powerless position of a woman. Foreigners who visited Russia noted the lack of rights and the "deplorable" situation of Russian women, but in a certain discourse: about the lack of rights of Russians and in jokes about beatings, transmitted starting from Sigismund Herberstein 16 . Alexander Guagnini in the 16th century wrote: “Just as men are in the hardest dependence on the great sovereign, so the wives of husbands are in a very miserable position: after all, no one will believe that a wife is honest and chaste if she does not live locked up, not leaving the house at all. Wives sit at home, weaving and spinning, having no rights and no influence in the household, yet slaves do household work. If husbands do not beat their wives, then the wives are offended and say that their husbands hate them, and they consider beatings a sign of love. In the church they are rarely let go, for friendly conversations even less often, and for feasts only those who are beyond all suspicion, that is, those who have already given birth. This surprisingly coincides with the statements of 19th-century researchers: “Where a husband rightfully occupies the position of a tyrant in his house in relation to his wife, he is in all other respects the slave of an unlimited despot: an unlimited lord in his seraglio, in his harem, in women's tereme, he is the most disenfranchised slave outside of it” 18 .

NL Pushkareva's studies are important for the history of the family in Ancient Russia 19 . In assessing the influence of the Church on the position of women, N. L. Pushkareva singles out the theme of “humiliation”, “submission, subordination” 20 and writes about “misogynistic postulates of Orthodoxy” 21 . The historian explains the facts of women's independence and political activity, which she successfully collected in her research, only by incomplete obedience to the "church doctrine". The conclusions of this researcher are aimed at refuting the picture of the humiliation of women in Ancient Russia: “As the diversified study of the problem deepened, generalization of information gleaned from sources of various types and types, the author became more and more convinced that the opinion about the humiliation of the position of women in Russia X- 15th century in comparison with the social status of men, and the idea of ​​the Russian Middle Ages as a time of suppression of the individual is nothing more than a myth that developed on the basis of the self-confidence of people of later eras, and, above all, contemporaries of the formation of capitalism” 22 .

N. L. Pushkareva noted that the question of why and how the position of women in Russian society in the 16th century changed was unresolved for historiography. The norms of attitude towards a woman, fixed by Domostroy, the appearance of “terem recluses” - all this inevitably raises the question for researchers: are these new phenomena in the history of culture or is it a consequence of those trends that already existed in Russian culture.

The reflections of I. E. Zabelin on this subject, the author of the most detailed study of women in pre-Petrine Russia, are also not without contradictions. On the one hand, he cannot fail to notice that the tower was not transferred from Byzantium at the first time of the adoption of Christianity, but he believes that an idea was brought: “Every idea invariably and inevitably gives birth to its fruit, creates its own form. Terem, at least in the Russian land, was the fruit of a fasting idea, the effect of which, and in rather strong features, is revealed very early in our ancient society. The monastic ideal in the princely family is already dominant under the grandchildren of St. Vladimir, and his first ascetics are the maidens, the daughters of Vsevolod and the sisters of Monomakh, Yanka (Anna) and Evpraksia” 23 . The characterization of the structure of the Old Russian family is also contradictory: on the one hand, I. E. Zabelin notes the leading role of a woman in the house and her decisive role in creating a monastery from the house. On the other hand, the role of hegumen in this monastery "Domostroy" assigns to the head of the family. I. E. Zabelin does not see this as a problem: “If the ancient Domostroy, addressing a man, the head of the house, pointed out to him the ideal of the hegumen, saying: you eat the abbess in your homes; here, together with an indication of the domestic ideal, the ideal of commanding power is determined. The embodiment of this ideal, in its very reality, in all its moral and formal details, nevertheless, mainly lay with the woman; by her thought, her soul, he was brought into action, by her constant care he was invariably supported ... We want to say that the monastic structure of home life was developed by the centuries-old moral activity of the female personality, of course, under the constant and unceasing influence of teaching, which was preached exclusively by a man ”24. However, it is impossible not to notice that the transfer of monastic features into domestic life in Russian culture led in the 16th century. to the further removal of women from the sphere of the sacred: even going to church became optional for her.

With increasing interest in the XVI century. to magic and sorcery 25 become relevant for culture and the idea of ​​a woman as a dangerous creature, capable of causing damage and harm to a man. Culturologists and ethnographers, as a rule, consider these phenomena as stable in culture and do not raise the question of changes in the forms of religious consciousness, although for modern historians of the Church this change is already becoming a topic for study 26 .

The development of property relations in the family in Muscovite Russia was not straightforward: on the one hand, the state protected the interests of land owners, on the other hand, it sought to take control of the disposal of land holdings in the interests of preserving the land fund for distribution to estates. State policy also determined changes in women's rights in the field of inheritance.

The question of whether there really was a deterioration in the position of women in Russian society in the 16th-17th centuries remains open.

Our task is to determine the vector of the influence of the Church on the Russian family.

1. Fight for a monogamous family

Christianity came to Russia when Byzantium had already introduced a law on the obligatory form of ecclesiastical marriage 27 . In Byzantium, the influence of the Roman legal tradition on the issue of marriage continued to be very significant. Roman laws paid special attention to betrothal: that is, the conclusion of a marriage contract - "the memory and promise of future marriages" 28 . Refusal to be engaged was severely punished. In the matter of marriage, the will of the parents was in the first place, and a marriage entered into without the consent of the parents was considered invalid (Prochiron, line 4, chapter 3). However, adult emancipated children (daughter after 25 years) 29 had the right to marry themselves.

As shown in the works of Ya. N. Shchapov, it was the area of ​​family law in Ancient Russia that was entirely assigned to the jurisdiction of the Church. Here she received broad judicial rights 30 . The Church tried to introduce those norms of family law that were already established in the Christian tradition in Byzantium, where laws limited marriage both by the age of the spouses and by the degree of their blood and spiritual relationship and property, and also forbade marriage more than four times. Byzantine laws also determined the reasons for allowing divorce 31 .

Questions about marriage belonged to the sphere of activity of bishops, but due to the small number of dioceses in Russia, this area practically went to the priests, who received “crown memories” from the bishops.

Acquaintance with Byzantine norms, which in themselves were not unchanged in this era, was carried out through the translation of Byzantine legal monuments, as well as through the creation of monuments of an ecclesiastical legal nature specifically for the Slavs, the oldest of which is the Judgment Law for people, in which punishments for violation of norms marriage and the protection of the unmarried made up a significant part of 32 . The translated monuments and the texts created by the Slavs were combined as part of the Pilot Books. Considerable and very diverse material was collected here on marriage issues.

Most of the conciliar rules and the canons of the fathers regarding the norms of marriage put forward, first of all, requirements for the marriage of clerics - thereby showing what should be a model for all Christians: the prohibition of marrying divorced people (Vas. Vel. 37) or engaged in "shameful craft"; the prohibition to drive away wives for clerics, including bishops (Ap. 5); the requirement to marry before consecration (or to take a vow of celibacy) (Neoc. 1); but there are also requirements relating to marriage in general: the prohibition to disdain marriage (Ap. 51); prohibition of marriage in close degrees of kinship (this took into account not only consanguinity, but also spiritual kinship) (VI evn. 54; Neokes. 2; Vas. Vel. 23, 68, 78, 79, 87; Tim. 11); prohibition or restriction of marriages with heretics and non-believers (IV evn. 14, VI ​​evn. 72, Laodice. 10, 31). It is especially necessary to note the 38th, 40th and 42nd rules of Basil the Great, which forbade marriage and marriage without the consent of the parents or, if it was a question of slaves, of their masters. Marriage without the consent of parents or masters was equated with fornication, and even if the parents gave consent after the fact, it was still punishable by a three-year excommunication 33 .

These norms were confirmed and supplemented by the imperial legislation, in the Old Slavonic edition this is the Collection of Justinian's short stories in 87 (93) chapters (ch. 45, 46 - the prohibition of clergy to marry after the appointment, ch. 71, 72 - forbidding women to live in the houses of bishops, ch. 85 - about the punishment of those who fornicate with nuns) 34 . Articles of both Byzantine and Russian origin were of particular practical importance in concluding marriages, defining those degrees of kinship, as well as various kinds of relations (guardianship, twinning, spiritual kinship), in which marriage was not allowed: the article “On forbidden marriages” (including texts from Prochiron - title 7, ch. 1) and Eclogues (title 2, ch. 2) 35 , as well as separate sections from the “Answers of Metropolitan Nikita of Heraclius” 36 , articles explaining the ways of calculating kinship “On forbidden marriages” 37 , “ Separation of marriages" 38, "Separation of marriages forbidden by nature" 39, "Charter on marriages" 40. In addition, in the articles of Russian origin included in the Kormchaya - the Rules of John, Metropolitan of Russia, the Questions of Kirik Novgorodets - many rules dealt with issues related to married life.

They regulated the norms of marriage and princely charters, referring them to the sphere of church court, first of all, the Charter of the Grand Duke Vladimir and the Charter of Prince Yaroslav. The charter of Prince Yaroslav forbade the “kidnapping” of brides 41 , established monetary penalties for rape, the amount of which was determined in accordance with the norms of “barbaric law” - the social status of the victim 42 , punished for refusing to marry after a marriage conspiracy 43 .

From the end of the XIII century. in Russia, the Rudder of the Serbian edition was distributed, the creation of which is associated with the name of the first autocephalous Serbian archbishop, St. Savvy 44 . In this edition, new articles concerning marriage appeared: ch. 46, I "The New Commandment of Tsar Alexei Komnenos" (novella 35, 1095), introducing the norm of married marriage for slaves, ch. 46, II "The Commandment of the New ... Alexy Komnenos" (Novel 24, 1084) on liability for violation of betrothal obligations, ch. 46, III "Memories of John Thrakis" (31 short stories 1092) on betrothal and pledge, ch. 55 - Prochiron (867), ch. 56, consisting of seven sections, including the article "On lawless marriages" by Patriarch Sisinius (997), ch. 59 "Statement of the union of the church under Constantine and Roman" (920), prohibiting the fourth marriage.

Marriage legislation makes up a large part of Prochiron: out of 40 sides, sides 1–11 and chapters 30, 33, 39 are devoted to this topic. Prochiron contained the famous definition of marriage given by the Roman jurist Modestin: of all life, but communion of divine and human truth” 45 . In Prochiron, as in the rules of Basil the Great mentioned above, there is an indication that marriage is performed at the will of parents or masters: “There is no marriage, unless those in power gather together, who want to marry or encroach” 46 . Only if the father was in captivity could the son marry without his consent, but not earlier than three years later 47 . However, coming of age canceled parental authority: if a girl was not given in marriage before the age of 25, she could marry against the will of her father 48 .

In Russia, the Pilot of the Russian edition was compiled from two editions, combining the two previous ones 49 . Directly related to the issue under consideration was an additional article by Kozma of Chalcedon, included in the Pilot's Guide, "On the hedgehog not to call your wife mistress", which is already in the oldest list of Pilots in the Russian edition of the 13th century. - Synodal 50.

Undoubtedly, the main direction in which the Church acted was creation of a monogamous family. The idea of ​​one marriage was not easy to strengthen both in princely life and in peasant life 51 . The chronicle speaks of five wives and 700 concubines of Grand Duke Vladimir 52 . Russian Truth knows slave concubines (Article 98 of the Long Edition), with whom they could cohabit regardless of the presence of a wife. The canons of John, Metropolitan of Russia, call for the correction of those who live with two wives, and in case of refusal they threaten them with excommunication 53 , the same canons speak of those who willfully let go of one wife and marry another 54 or cohabit with someone else’s wife 55 . The same rules threaten the eruption of the priest, who will bless the three-marriage 56 . Among Cyric's questions there is also the question of what is better: to openly have a concubine and give birth to children with her, or secretly sin with many slaves 57 . All this indicates that the idea of ​​monogamy did not fit well with the customs and norms that existed in society. Even in the fifteenth century Metropolitan Jonah, addressing the Vyatka governors, wrote: “Our children live illegally, taking wives up to five, up to shti, up to seven, and you accept their blessing and offering from them, which is disgusting to God” 58.

The greatest requirements for the purity of married life were put forward to the candidate for the priesthood. As Archbishop Nifont said in response to Cyric's questions: if a priest at least once goes astray even when drunk, then he can no longer be a priest or deacon, even if he resurrects the dead 59 .

The Church opposed violence against a woman, which the princes and their entourage allowed themselves, which was already reflected in the norms of the Judgment Law for people. The unrestricted right of the strong, murder were those daily life phenomena with which the Church fought 60 . “Kidnapping of brides” could also be a pagan archaic rite, dating back to the oldest form of marriage, but it could also simply represent the abduction of girls. They abducted, as is known from princely life, married women. In the old Russian teaching, which was included in Izmaragd, it was said: “O brothers, do not fornicate with others from your wives. Behold, the prince and ruler of the verb, do not take wives from their husbands, do not cling to them. As if by the same law we are copulated and at the judgment we will still stand before God. And do not take away the virgins either, do not reproach the poor and do not shame the virgins: for you will cry out to God and your fury and your wrath will be shed on you.

The rules of Metropolitan John allow priests to continue living with wives defiled in captivity (a priest was forbidden to have a harlot wife, so the rule explained that violent corruption is not a sin) 62 .

In ancient Russian church teachings, in the epistles of metropolitans, in church charters, there are invariably requirements that should have influenced the family situation: 1) the requirement for a wedding ceremony;

2) prohibition of bride kidnapping; 3) prohibition of violence; 4) the prohibition to marry in close degrees of kinship.

The fulfillment of these requirements could lead to an improvement in the position of a woman, guaranteed her a certain stability, and protected her from violence.

2. Church and marriage in Ancient Russia

The requirement to marry is constantly heard in the teachings of the Kyiv metropolitans. The Rules of Metropolitan John states that, according to existing practice, only boyars get married, and simple people they do not get married, but play weddings according to pagan rites “with dancing and humming and splashing” 63 . The Rules of Metropolitan Maxim (1283-1305) contain a call for a wedding even in old age: “If they (wives) are driven into fornication, without the blessing of the church, then what is there to help? But pray to them and force them, if they are both old and young, let them get married in the church. The same requirement is expressed in the message of Metropolitan Photius to Pskov in 1410-1417: “And those who do not live according to the law with their wives, without the blessing of the priest, have understood, teach them and lead them to Orthodoxy; with a blessing they would catch their wives, and not with a blessing they would want to live, otherwise they would be separated ”65. However, the church rite was introduced slowly, and the law recognized an unmarried marriage even in the 16th century. 66

The wedding, which the Church sought from those entering into marriage, also assumed some stages that preceded it: this is the betrothal, performed according to a certain rite, and the marriage search. Under Roman law, betrothal was equated with marriage, and refusing it entailed responsibility. The betrothal was accompanied by a "marriage agreement": determining the size of the wife's dowry. Behind the marriage arrangement was the archaic custom of buying a wife. An obligatory part of the marriage arrangement was a meal at the bride's parents (the priest did not take part in this). This meal included cutting cheese as an indispensable component. According to the Charter of Prince Yaroslav, refusal to marry after an agreement was considered a disgrace for the bride, and the violator had to pay a fine 67 .

Researchers unanimously note the predominance of the contractual principle in Old Russian family law 68 . The agreement was arranged by the parents, the consent of the bride and groom was not expected. A marriage entered into without the consent of the bride was punished only if the bride committed suicide 69 . The age of those whose parents entered into a marriage agreement could be 8–10 years old 70 . Stoglav confirmed as the norm the age for marriage: a boy - 15 years old, a girl - 12 years old 71 .

Row charters that determine the amount of dowry have been known since the 16th century, but the “conspiracy” charter of the 13th century has also been preserved. 72 According to M.K. Tsaturova, the earliest in-line 1513-1514. In it, Aksinya Pleshcheyeva promises to give her daughter Anastasia in marriage to Prince Ivan Vasilyevich Obolensky and give her a dowry 73 . Row letters determined the timing of the wedding, the size of the dowry and the penalty in case of the groom's refusal to marry. Row letters, like other property transactions relating to land ownership, were to be recorded in orders. This order was approved by the Council Code of 1649. 74

Before marriage, the priest had to find out whether the married couple were related by blood or spirituality. The clarification of this question presented great difficulties, and the necessary distance (not closer than the sixth degree) was not always observed. The very order of the “marriage search”, as well as the issued “crown memories” 75 (letters that the priests received from the bishop for the wedding and for which it was necessary to pay the “crown duty”) were not something invariable 76 . The ceremony of the wedding was performed after the ceremony of betrothal.

The Church affirmed the view of the family as a union of two persons with mutual responsibilities. Reality made significant adjustments to the lofty idea of ​​marriage as an image of the union of Christ and the Church. We have already noted that the wedding in Russia for a long time was not generally accepted. Pagan ways of marriage: theft (“kidnapping”) of brides, cohabitation in close degrees of kinship, and finally, bigamy 77 - these are the phenomena that sources note throughout the Middle Ages. Another feature of the Russian big family, known to ethnographers in the 19th century, is the power of the head of the family. A large family, consisting of old parents, their sons with wives and grandchildren, was characteristic of the peasant environment: “A peasant family was headed by one person - a big man. His position in moral, economic and even administrative terms was recognized by all members of the family, the community and even the authorities” 78 . In the city, researchers believe, both large and small families were common 79 , however, even here "the power of the head was practically unlimited: he disposed of the property of the family and the fate of each of its members" 80 .

Among the Cossacks, wives were the subject of purchase and sale, however, as M.F. Vladimirsky-Budanov believed, these were separate facts, and not phenomena of law 81 .

As Ya. N. Shchapov noted, a feature of Russian law was that the failure to marry a daughter was punishable by a fine in favor of the metropolitan (Byzantium did not know such a norm 82). It is difficult to explain what caused this rule: the need to oblige parents to give their daughters in marriage in order to stop their use as only labor force in the family, i.e., the protection of the daughter's right to marry, or the unwillingness of the community to support a daughter in the event of her parents' death?

3. Protection of women's property rights in pre-Petrine legislation

The marriage conspiracy was intended to protect the wife's property and leave an opportunity for the bride's family to return this property. This purpose was also served by the row letters already mentioned above. Documents show that the wife's relatives, even after marriage, acted as guarantors of both her interests and the clan. In case of insults inflicted on the wife by the husband, the relatives defended her in various ways: “And if a wife is disgusted, she does not tolerate beating and torment, she complains to her relatives that he does not live with her in council, and beats and torments, and those relatives that person is beaten with the brow of the patriarch or with a great power” 83 . Ivan III, having given his daughter Elena to Alexander of Lithuania, did not cease to be interested in her relationship with her Catholic husband, and this marriage led to confessional conflicts that resulted in clashes between states.

The laws that came from Byzantium along with Christianity protected wife 's property rights 84 . The law provided for a mandatory dowry, it was property that could not be taken away from the wife, it was inherited only by her children. The husband could dispose of the dowry with the consent of his wife. After the death of her husband, the wife had the right to restore the dowry 85 . A widow with young children had the rights of the head of the family. It was under the influence of the Byzantine tradition that the rights of a woman in the family were not only protected, but also in certain epochs the property rights of a daughter were more significant than the rights of a son, who remained without property rights until the death of his father, the head of the family 86 .

From the 16th century Numerous decrees were issued regulating the right of inheritance. First of all, the legislation concerned estates and estates. The decree on princely estates of 1562 forbade princes to give estates as dowries to daughters or sisters or leave as inheritance: And which prince will not become childless - and those patrimonies should be assigned to the sovereign. And whoever the prince writes in his spiritual letter the patrimony of his daughter, or his own sister, and writes the soul from that patrimony to build - and do not give those patrimonies to daughters and sisters as a dowry, but give as a dowry the souls of those whose patrimonies remember, from the bellies them" 87 . Even a wife could be left without a fiefdom: “And whoever the prince will write to his wife in his spiritual (entire) fiefdom, and the fiefdom will be great, and the sovereign will issue a decree to that fiefdom” 88 .

GG Weikhard considers this law to be the biggest restriction on the property rights of women in Russian history 89 , but the edge of the law was directed not so much at women as at limiting the rights of patrimonial princes in favor of the sovereign. The Sudebnik of 1606 allows leaving the land of the daughter if there was no son 90 .

The change in a woman's property rights did not directly affect her position in the family. Legislation of the end of the 17th century. sought to protect a woman from domestic violence by her husband. Husbands were forbidden to sell the estates of their wives without their consent: “To which widows and girls were given related estates, and they married with those estates, and the relatives of those widows and girls beat with their foreheads that the husbands of those wives, and their relatives are beaten and tortured, and they are ordered to betray those dowries of their estates and pawn in their own names, and that would be their petition, so that their husbands, those of their relatives of the estates of wives, would not sell or pawn in their names; and in the Local Order, according to such bills of sale and mortgages, those votchinas should not be recorded, and such petitioners should be refused, and their relatives should sell and pledge their dowries in their own names freely, and in the Local Order, those votchinas should not be written down ”91. In this boyar verdict, one should see not only the desire to protect the woman from the arbitrariness of her husband, but also the desire of the wife's clan to maintain the ability to control the estates of her relative. In the same way, the family of the husband sought to regain his fiefdoms if he died childless, and not to leave them to the widow 92 . According to the Council Code, childless widows did not inherit ancestral or meritorious estates: with only these two categories of immovable property available, widows received only % of movable property and the dowry they brought 93 .

4. Rules on divorce in Ancient Russia

The Church defended the idea of ​​the indissolubility and uniqueness of marriage. Remarriage was allowed in the event of the death of one of the spouses, but church rules set a number of restrictions. The Church showed a negative attitude towards second marriage in its absolute prohibition for clergy: a second marriage could not become a clergyman, and a widowed priest did not have the right to marry (Ap. 17, VI Ecumenical 3, Neokes. 7, Vas. Vel. 12). Penance was imposed on the second-married - 1-2 years (Vas. Vel. 4), third-marital - 5 years (Vas. Vel. 4). The fourth marriage was completely banned after the scandals with the emperor Leo the Wise, who just approved the wedding as the only form of marriage. The entry of Emperor Leo into a fourth marriage led to the prohibition of such marriage and to a church schism that lasted almost a century 94 .

As regards entry into new marriage not widowers 95 , but divorced ones, the Church, following the civil law, allowed only the party innocent of the divorce to marry, which was also recorded in Byzantine divorce cases 96 . Canon 7 of the Neo-Caessarian Council forbade a priest to feast at the marriage of a bigamist, because the bigamist needs repentance 97 . The rules of Nicephorus the Confessor unambiguously forbid the wedding of bigamists and speak of the prohibition of a bigamist for 2 years, and a tripartite for 5 years 98 . No less strict and unequivocal was the decision of the cathedral of Patriarch Sisinius, where it was clearly stated that the wedding ceremony could not be repeated, because only one pure and immaculate marriage was crowned. The decrees of Patriarch Sisinius, together with the rules of Nicephorus the Confessor and Nikita of Heraclius, which also forbids the wedding of bigamists, are found in the Serbian Ribbon of the 15th century. from the collection of State Historical Museum 99 .

As handwritten Greek and Slavic breviaries show, the rite of marriage if one of the spouses is a widow has different editions. Some omit the readings of the Apostle and the Gospel, the special litany, and the laying on of crowns 100, which corresponds to the strict prohibition of second marriage. In others, the laying on of crowns was preserved, which was associated with a change in the view of the wedding 101 . Already when compiling Stoglav, the difference in Slavic practices was obvious. The editors of Stoglav collected in chapters 19-24 the ranks and interpretations known in Slavic literature. In the rite of the wedding of a widower (or widow) with the one entering (entering) into the first marriage, the name of the one entering into the first marriage is called in the litanies earlier than the second marriage, the wedding rite is performed in full, but at the end a special word is said about bigamists 102. In the event that both are second-married, the wedding is not performed, it is read, which speaks of coming to marriage “for the sake of natural temptation and in the youth of widowhood that happened” and asks for a chaste life. The Gospel is not read, but only the Apostle is read - up to the words “Let the woman be afraid……” 103 . In Stoglav, the rule of Nicephorus the Confessor is given, according to which “a bigamist does not marry, but accepts a ban for 2 years, and a tripartite for 5 years” 104, and the rule of Nikita of Heraclius. We give this rule in full in Russian translation: “Strict law does not allow the wedding of second marriages, but the custom of the Great Church does not observe this, but it also lays crowns on second marriages, and no one is condemned for this. However, such are removed from divine communion for a year or two, and the priest who crowned them is forbidden by the 7th Canon of the Neo-Caessarian Council to participate in their marriage feast. But in the next, 23rd chapter, it is said that there is no wedding for a second marriage, and the words of Gregory the Theologian are quoted, that “the first marriage is the law, the second is a ban, the third is a transgression, the fourth is wickedness, because a swine life”, an indication of prohibition for triplets up to 5 years, and then communion only at Easter 106 .

Thus, it is obvious that the meaning of the wedding of the second marriage and the rites of blessing the second marriage, which speak of the need for repentance for those entering into marriage, already by the 16th century. were contradictory and went back to different practices. G.K. Kotoshikhin, who described in detail the wedding ceremony of the 17th century, notes the differences in the wedding: if a widower marries a girl, the crown is placed not on the head, but on the right shoulder, if the widower is married for the third time, then on the left, and if the widower marries a widow, then “they don’t get married” 107 .

The attitude towards the third marriage was negative (Stoglav established a crown duty for the third marriage - 4 altyns, while for the first - one), and the fourth marriage was generally prohibited. These norms are fully reflected in Stoglav 108 .

However, in practice, due to the short life span, frequent wives during childbirth, widowhood was widespread, and widowers often married. Thus, the fate of the Grand Duke's house is well known: Ivan III, having become a widower, married Sophia Paleolog 109 , Vasily III divorced his wife Solomonia Saburova and married Elena Glinskaya; Ivan IV obtained permission for the 4th marriage from the Church, but did not stop there.

In Byzantium, the strictness of the church's attitude towards divorce came into conflict with the norms of Roman law, which allowed the free divorce of spouses. In Byzantium, restrictions on the norms of divorce were repeatedly introduced, but, as K. A. Nevolin noted, “Greco-Roman legislation did not destroy the freedom of divorce, it only subjected arbitrariness, which did not want to comply with the laws known for punishments” 110 . In Prochiron, known in Russia in the lists of the Pilots of the Serbian edition and included in the printed Pilots, the 11th line (“on the permission of marriage and on its guilt”) contains the reasons why divorce is possible: 1) the husband’s inability to marital cohabitation (“ a hedgehog by nature by a husband is not able to create "111; 2) if the husband or wife is missing without a trace, having been in captivity for 5 years; 3) if one of the spouses becomes a monk; 4) if the husband or wife hears about high treason and does not inform; 5) wife's adultery; 6) the wife plots against her husband's life or, knowing about someone else's plot, does not tell him; 7) if the wife eats and drinks with other people's husbands and takes a bath; 8) if the wife spends the night away from home without the consent of her husband (excluding the home of the parents). Then, the reasons why a wife can demand a divorce (“guilt, for their own sake it is like a wife to separate from her husband”) are singled out separately: 9) if the husband is plotting against the king; 10) if the husband plots against the life of his wife; 11) if a husband gives his wife to others for adultery; 12) if a husband slanders his wife in adultery; 13) if a husband keeps another wife in his house or "in a friend's house with another wife, he often stays convicted"; 14) if the husband - a soldier or a merchant - disappears in the war. In this case, the wife and her relatives are obliged to find out exactly about his death, and she must wait a year 112. In the Eclogue, which came to Russia possibly earlier than Prochiron, there are fewer of these reasons, there is no entry into monasticism, but there is a reason for the possession of one of the spouses 113 . Byzantine monuments not only establish the reasons for divorce, but also determine each time who will receive the crown and marriage gift, as well as the rights of children 114 . Only the first part cited by us, concerning the reasons for the divorce, was received and entered into the Charter of Prince Yaroslav. The charter of Yaroslav identifies six reasons for divorce: a) if the wife hears that someone is plotting against the king or the prince, but does not tell her husband; b) if the husband finds his wife with her lover; c) if the wife is plotting to kill her husband or knows that someone is plotting and will not tell him; d) if a wife, without the consent of her husband, walks and eats with strangers and sleeps without her husband; e) if the wife goes to games and does not listen to her husband; f) if the wife either steals from her husband herself or leads thieves 115 . Here, the church was especially singled out as an object of robbery: “if a wife brings tati on her husband, orders to steal, or steals herself, or steal goods or a church, give it away, then separate it” 116 .

The charter of Prince Yaroslav was significantly expanded and revised in various editions, considered in the works of Ya. N. Shchapov. New reasons for divorce were also included: 1) if the wife marries a serf who conceals from her that he is a serf; 2) if the husband slanders his wife in order to get rid of her; 3) if the husband tries to poison his wife 117 .

A number of written monuments common in Russia contain divorce norms: these are chapter 32 of the Law of judgment for people 118, the Rules of the Council of Chalcedon, “The commandment of the holy fathers from the rules in brief” 119. Old Russian monuments - the article "On Separation" - allow us to single out the norm for divorce and through the fault of the husband: the husband stealing clothes from his wife 120 . In the Charter we find a limitation on the possibility of expelling a wife: “If the wife of a bad woman gets an illness, or blindness, or a long illness, then do not let her go” 121 . However, in another monument - Metropolitan Justice - the same article has the opposite meaning: "If the wife will be dashing ill, or blind, or a long illness, then let her go, and also her husband" 122.

In addition to the norms of divorce, Yaroslav's Charter contains a system of punishments for violations of the norms of family life. The charter of Prince Yaroslav provided for the conclusion of a wife in a church house if she either gives birth to a child not from her husband (“she will get children without her husband or with husbands”) or destroy the child. The woman with whom the husband lives without divorcing his first wife must also be given to the church house (“and the young woman should go to the church house, but live with the old woman”) 123. At the same time, the Charter does not clearly speak about the punishment of the husband, using the formula "the husband of the Metropolitan in wine." If a wife leaves her husband and lives with another, then she should be given to a church house 124. The Charter also formulated those cases in which the wife is punished by the husband (“the husband executes”), but no divorce occurs: this is theft from the husband and father-in-law and the wife’s “greening” 125 .

The Charter also establishes a system of penalties for unauthorized divorce: “If the boyar will let the wife of the great boyars, 3 hryvnias for rubbish, and 5 hryvnias of gold for the metropolitan; lesser boyars, a hryvnia of gold, and a hryvnia of gold to the metropolitan, 2 rubles for deliberate rubles, and 2 rubles for the metropolitan, idle children 12 hryvnias, and the metropolitan 12 hryvnias, and the prince executes ”126.

The Zinar collection sets a period of excommunication for 9 years for a wife for an unauthorized divorce: “A wife will leave her husband, and sometimes her husband t) in a different country and lives with him, yes o( t)beams about( t) c (e) rque years 9, creating on the vsec d (e) n bow ( n) 37, dryly eating their bread in p (o) n (e) d (e) lnik, and Wednesday (du) and Friday (o) k. Also( d) and to her husband, to him the second is attached, then and de prohibition yes accept. Is it not your husband and his wife who knows what you (th) and the bride ( d) I sing, then there are few rules for ( d) promises him 127 .

Undoubtedly, the practice of unauthorized divorces was widespread. The right to divorce was given by the spiritual father - the legislation struggled with this order even in the 18th century. 128 A wife could be forced to leave for a monastery, as Kotoshikhin noted: “And then he contrives to inflict upon her so that she gets a haircut, but if he doesn’t do it, she doesn’t get a haircut, but he beats her and torments her in every possible way ... to those places, that she would like to cut her hair herself” 129 .

From the 16th century there are records of the mutual release of the spouses, made before the court: “I ex-wife my name I release, and I repair my freedom” 130 . The divorce of Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich from Solomonia in 1525 became the subject of discussion in Russian society.

Behind the “husband executes” formula is the question of how far the husband’s power to punish his wife extended and how much the Church could interfere in the relationship between husband and wife. Yaroslav's charter contains an article about beating her husband's wife: "If the wife beats her husband, the Metropolitan is 3 hryvnias" 131 . According to Ya. N. Shchapov, the Church punished only for insulting or beating someone else's wife, "similar actions in relation to one's own wife were regarded not as a crime, but as the fulfillment of a duty" 132 . K. A. Nevolin, researching Russian family law, also noted that “the right of a husband to punish his wife was considered undoubted, only he should not beat too hard”, as evidence of which the researcher cited a handwritten note of 1640, where the obligation “of his wife” was given do not go silent in vain" 133 . Legal researchers paid special attention to the question of punishment for the murder of a wife. N. S. Nizhnik gives examples showing that there was no single norm for punishing a husband for killing his wife 134 . The ancient norm of Roman law, which allowed a husband to kill a wife caught in adultery, is also known in the penitents who came to Russia. So, it is contained in the aforementioned collection Zinar: “Is it possible to find with some (

) of adultery and will kill both, the law does not judge this, writes more “deliver these to Satan for bodily harm, so that d (y) x will be saved,” and when he kills, he eats with him, which he will save for himself "135. But in the same collection it is said about the expulsion of the one who committed such a thing and about the deprivation of his property: (f)rk(o)v" 136 .

The origin of the punishment to the wife for killing her husband by burying him in the ground remains unclear. This norm is fixed in the Council Code of 1649 (Chapter XXII, Article 14) 137 . At the same time, the article stated that neither the requests of children nor "neighbors" should be taken into account. Apparently, this was a new norm for Russian law. It was already abolished in 1689: “From now on, other such wives should not be dug into the ground for murdering their husbands, but executed by death, beheaded, and sent to all cities to the governors and to the labial elders of their great Sovereigns of letters” 138.

5. "Oh hedgehog do not call your wife mistress"

When creating the Russian edition of the Pilots in con. 13th century the compilers included in it the work of Cosmas of Chalcedon, a writer of the 9th century. 139 "That it is not fitting to call a wife mistress" 140 .

This small monument contains all the New Testament texts that speak of the headship of the husband. However, a surprising shift occurred: if the prohibition on divorce in the Gospel was addressed to husbands and caused their rejection, because it limited the freedom of the husband and his right to expel his wife, then in this text the position of the wife is compared with the position of the slave, and the result is not in favor of the wife : a slave can be freed, but a wife cannot.

In the text of Cosmas of Chalcedon, the wife still remains under the oath of sin, the saving incarnation of Christ does not apply to her.

This essay is defensive in nature: the compiler needed to prove the subordination of the wife to her husband.

There is no doubt that the compiler of the Pilots did not choose this text by chance. Its lengthy edition is contained in the Paisiev collection of early. 15th century 141 and in the collection from the Sofia collection 142 . This collection, in addition to the above article, contains a number of works devoted to the denunciation of "evil wives": "The word of the holy great scribe Antiochus of Chernoritsa How to watch out for evil wives" 143, "The commandment of the Greek Council" (a text with instructions to the wife to be peaceful, "and not kotorni") 144 , "The Word about Herodias" 145 .

In ancient Russian literature, one could also find texts expressing a different attitude towards women. So, the “Word” of Gregory the Theologian was well known, in which he opposes different attitude to the adultery of a man and a woman: “As for chastity, as I see, many have a wrong concept, and their law is not equal and not correct. For why has the law restrained the female sex, and given freedom to the male, and a wife who plots against the bed of a man commits adultery, and is subjected to strict observance of the laws for this, but a husband who commits adultery with his wife is not subject to responsibility? I do not accept such legislation, I do not approve of custom. Husbands were legislators: therefore the law is turned against wives, therefore children were given under the authority of their fathers, and the weaker sex was left in disregard. On the contrary, God ordained not so, but: honor your father and your mother() - here is the first commandment, combined with a promise: yes it will be good and whoever curses his father or mother, let him die the death(). You see, he honored the good, and punished the evil. More: the blessing of the father establishes the houses of the children, but the mother's oath uproots to the ground(). See how equal the law is. One Creator of husband and wife, one dust - both of them are one image; one law for them, one death, one resurrection; we are equally born of husband and wife; one debt is due to the children to their parents. How do you demand chastity, but you yourself do not observe? Are you asking for what you didn't give? Why, being himself flesh of the same dignity, do you not give the law equally? If you pay attention to the worst: then the wife sinned, Adam also sinned, the serpent deceived both, one did not turn out to be weaker, and the other stronger. But consider the best. Both are saved by Christ through suffering. He became flesh for the husband, but also for the wife. He died for her husband, and the wife is saved by death. Christ from seed of David is called (what, perhaps, you think, a husband is honored), but is also born from the Virgin - this is already an honor to wives!

And both will be said into one flesh but the one flesh also has the same honor. Paul inspires chastity by example. What example and how? This mystery is great : but I speak in Christ to the Church(). It is good for a wife to honor Christ in the person of her husband, and it is good for a husband not to dishonor the Church. Wife, he says Yes, she is afraid of her husband, but let the husband also love his wife, because Christ also loves the Church.

A comparison of the two texts shows how far the patristic tradition could diverge in understanding the place of a woman. It is no coincidence that the most famous holy deaconesses are associated with the era of Gregory the Theologian, about whom he himself wrote many enthusiastic words, and with the time of Cosmas of Chalcedon, a new attack on the rights of women.

Another article included in the Pilots of both the Old Slavic and Russian editions is an article about Armenian heresies, which contains a story about a female patriarch. This is one of the variants of the well-known medieval story about Popess John. Elected to the patriarch for her virtues, "for her great purity," Lin (one of the popes also bore this name) received universal praise. But there was a person who decided to expose Lina's "weakness", entered her service, deceived her, and when the Easter holiday came and Lina had to serve and bless, she could not go out to people because of illness and weakness. Then she gave birth, and the seducer kidnapped the child and fled to the Greek country 147 . This text was included in many lists of Pilots in the Russian edition and was published as part of the Cyril Book, published in Moscow in 1644. 148 This plot consolidated in the traditional consciousness the connection between heresy and the female priesthood. The image of a female pope was repeatedly ridiculed in later church periodicals: in 1912, the Old Believers reprinted the article “The Women's Link in the Chain of Succession of the Hierarchy” from the Polotsk Diocesan Gazette 149 .

6. "About evil wives"

It should also be noted that collections of texts "On Evil Wives" are unusually widespread in ancient Russian literature. These texts are based on the well-known words from the Proverbs of King Solomon () and the Book of Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach (ch.) about an evil wife. But in the biblical text, the "evil wife" is balanced by the "wise wife" who is awarded the highest praise; also contains the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. Everything is different in Russian literature. "Wise wives" appear here only alone: ​​Princess Olga, "the wisest of all people", the maiden Fevronia. While lengthy narratives about evil wives are included in many ancient Russian collections, starting with the Izbornik of 1073, in the article “For the sake of the apostle’s speech: I do not command a woman to teach,” the compiler explains the foundations of this prohibition. The wife has already taught Adam evil. Prior to this, husband and wife were equal, and after the fall, the wife becomes a subordinate 150, the disobedience of the wife became the cause of “world destruction” and the death of a person 151 . From the first wife (Eve, she is revered in Orthodoxy as a saint, and on the famous icon-painting image Christ brings Eve out of hell together with) the scribe goes to the prodigal wife and the evil-speaking wife and describes the whole horror of life with such a wife, and then returns to the words of the apostle Paul that the head of the wife is the husband and the wife was created for the sake of the husband, followed by a text about widows. Chrysostom's words about Herodias "No other animal is accurate to a woman of evil speaking" adjoins this chapter, where it is aphoristically stated that there is nothing equal to female malice: "Oh, the evil of evil is more evil than the wife of evil" 152. This text had a huge impact on ancient Russian literature: it was used by Daniil Zatochnik in his Prayer; it is found in different editions in the Golden Chain 153 and Izmaragda. The aphorism of statements about an evil wife turned them into folk proverbs. What is surprising is not the appearance of this text, but the fact that there is nothing to oppose to it in ancient Russian literature. Researchers have the impression that “evil wives” clearly dominated ancient Russian literature: “The famous Byzantine “Bees”, fiercely stinging women, were transported and acclimatized, falling into the hands of newly converted Russian scribes, who were carried away by their reading, began to compose in imitation of them in own works in the same spirit" 154 .

Science also presents another way of explaining the negative attitude of ancient Russian scribes towards women. In a well-known article by S. Smirnov, “Godless women,” women in Ancient Russia are characterized mainly as bearers of pagan traditions: “At the time of the establishment of Christianity and for a long time afterwards, Russian women stood on the side of paganism, jealously kept its age-old traditions, resisted, albeit passively, the new faith 155, “... they secretly kept the legends of deep pagan antiquity: they prayed to half-forgotten deities, they knew rituals, they remembered prayers, they told myths (“they played fables”, “Woman's fables”). So the ancient Russian woman resisted Christianity for a long time. It long ago became the dominant, state faith, but in the house near the hearth, in the family, the old paganism, for which women stood, lived for a long time. The researcher collected a significant number of examples from confessional questionnaires and teachings, which speak of the inadmissibility of various manifestations of paganism, which include “pity” (mourning), “idolatry”, prayers to “women in labor”, various kinds of magic associated with potions, “enchantments”, "nauzami". However, in the absolute majority of the examples cited by the researcher, ungodly women and sorceresses are mentioned in tandem with the masculine gender: “whisperers”, sorcerers, sorcerers (“and there were no women or peasant sorcerers in your parish” 157). In addition, magic is of a borderline or marginal nature, all “strangers” participate in it: “Lapps and Samoyeds” 158 , Germans and Jews or “Witch Woman” in Lithuanian cities 159 . In the examples cited by S. Smirnov, another connection is visible: the appeal of women to "witches" and the need to influence their husbands or heal children. In the complete absence of any form of medicine, treatment in the Russian countryside until the 19th century. remained in the hands of the women who treated with potions. Finally, all obstetric care was in the hands of women, midwives, that is, there was no alternative to women, and remained until the 20th century. many beliefs and archaic rituals associated with childbirth 160 . We can talk about a significant space in the life of a Russian person that was not affected by Christianity. But it is difficult to agree with the conclusions of S. Smirnov about the hostility of the women of Ancient Russia to Christianity. The role of women in the Old Believers shows that Christianity has grown into Russian culture, otherwise the historian could not observe the “religious conservatism” with which S. Smirnov explained the split 161 .

In some Slavic manuscripts, one cannot fail to notice the compiler's interest in women's lives and images. So, in the "parchment" Collection of the XIV century. from the Chudovsky collection are included: In memory of the martyr Irina (May 5 - fol. 92v.), Empress Theophania (December 16 - fol. 106v.), Father Simeon's story about the merchant's widow who refused to marry (following 109v.), “About the maiden who was cut from her father-in-law” (following 121), “About the maiden who was killed by her mother” (following 122v.), The memory of Tsarina Irina in monasticism Xenia (August 13 - fol. 153-154v.), Slovo from the life of blessed Helena (l. 224) 162 . Does this selection reflect the interest of the customer or does the manuscript have an addressee? We cannot yet unambiguously answer this question.

If we sum up some of the influence of Orthodoxy on the Russian family, it is obvious that caring for a monogamous family was one of the main tasks of the Church. With Christianity, new orders for marriage came, marriages in a close degree of kinship were limited, the possibility of remarriages was limited even in the case of widowhood. The fourth marriage was generally forbidden, for the second and third, penance was due. But marriages were made according to the will of the parents. Church teachings show that polygamy was widespread. The hierarchs insisted on weddings, but this practice took root slowly and affected only the upper strata of society. The prohibition of unauthorized divorces protected the interests of women. Old Russian law knew a number of reasons why divorce was allowed, including through the fault of the husband. There was also the practice of divorce by mutual consent, accompanied by the tonsure of one of the spouses as a monk. It was in the field of family law that the Church had the greatest rights, and this was the reason for both the translation of a significant collection of Byzantine legislation on this issue and the creation of Russian texts, in particular the Rule of Yaroslav, the Record of Separation, etc.

As for relationships in the family, here the primacy of the husband was confirmed by the articles included in the Pilot Book in the Russian tradition.

Usually, the appearance in the middle is associated with the influence of Orthodoxy. 16th century in well-to-do circles, there is a trend towards seclusion of women: foreigners note the desire to completely exclude a woman from participation in public life, to isolate her from the outside world, so that even going to church becomes optional 163 . However, there is no evidence that there was a change in the view of women in Orthodoxy at that time. There is also an opinion that the seclusion of women is a consequence of the Tatar influence. From Ser. 16th century we can talk about the deterioration of the position of women in connection with the general atmosphere in Russian society: the oprichnina, the terror associated with it and the zemstvo ruin. The monument of church legislation Stoglav does not prescribe any measures that would lead to a worsening of the position of women. Domostroy draws us the image of a housewife woman and calls her "empress" 164 . The husband is obliged to “teach” her: to punish, but not in front of everyone, but to “crawl with fear alone” 165 . If the prescriptions for beating children go back to the Old Testament, then in relation to the wife, this practice raises a question. It can be noted that the Old Testament norms had a significant impact on Russian life. “Election from the law given by God to Moses” (a compilation compiled in Byzantium), which is a selection of Old Testament books concerning, among other things, family relationships, was widely used in ancient Russian literature and was included in Kormchaya along with other monuments of law. The researchers noted a certain similarity in the Russian family and the patriarchal biblical one: “The Biblical and Old Russian families were similar, at least in that both were in a natural patriarchal state, when the rights of the head of the family absorbed the rights of the rest of its members and when every educational measure was determined by natural feeling. Domostroy transfers monastic forms to the family, and makes the head of the family "abbot" 167 . Apparently, this idea of ​​a husband as an abbot, to whom the monastic tradition demanded unconditional submission, also affected family relationships.

But at the same time, we must not forget that the role of women in the household was still very significant: taking care of the family meal, the clothes of the household, raising children, keeping the house in order - all this lay with the woman. A peasant woman participated in field work on an equal basis with a man.

Perhaps the very exclusion of women from public life is caused by a desire to resist new trends towards the activation of women. One of the clearest examples of participation in political life is the activities of Elena Glinskaya, the wife of Vasily III. According to the documents of the 70s. XVI century, and Tsarina Irina Feodorovna actively participated in embassy affairs, she herself talked with foreign ambassadors, gave them gifts from herself 168 . At the beginning of the XVII century. we see the active participation of women in palace intrigues. Although Marina Mniszek entirely belonged to the Polish, and not Russian culture, nevertheless, even after the death of her husband, she was able to gather an army around her, consisting mostly of Russians. The mother of Mikhail Fedorovich, nun Martha, was very active: she could afford not to agree even with the opinion of her husband, and it was her efforts that the proposed marriage of her son with Maria Ivanovna Khlopova was terminated against the will of her father, then Patriarch Filaret. Here is how I. E. Zabelin wrote about this: “The sovereign’s mother, the great old woman Marfa Ivanovna, swore herself with oaths that she would not be in the kingdom before her son if Khlopova was the queen. What was there to do, how to act? The choice was clear, however. It was impossible to exchange one's own mother and, moreover, a great old woman for a bride, this would have contradicted all the moral provisions of the life of that time. Nun Martha showed in this case the fullness of maternal power. However, parental authority in marriage matters was destined to endure in the 17th century. significant changes.

7. New trends in marriage law

The development of Russian statehood, the impact on Russian of various cultural traditions made changes in the position of women.

In Russian culture appear in the XVI century. such new phenomena as the "choice of the royal bride." “Reviews of the Tsar’s brides”, held in the Russian state since the time of Vasily Ivanovich III, who chose Solomonida Saburova (later sent to a monastery) as his wife, although they had a literary prototype in imperial life (the life of Philaret the Merciful speaks of such a review arranged by the Empress Irina), but rather, they resemble the obligation to send recruits or reviews of future janissaries (which is worth one threat “and which of you will hide the girl’s daughter at home and will not be lucky with our boyars, and he will be in great disgrace and execution from me” 170 ) and testify to far-reaching centralization. It is no coincidence that Paul Jovius compares this custom with the orders of the Ottoman sultans 171 .

The establishment of serfdom, enshrined in the Council Code of 1649, sharply worsened the position of peasants in general and the position of women in a peasant family. According to the Council Code, the husband had the right to “give himself, his wife and children to work for food” 172 . The husband had the right to “humble his wife”, but not to maim, and the murder of his wife was considered a crime 173 . In addition to parental power, which determined the decision on the issue of marriage, the gentlemen had the right to determine the fate of their serfs. From now on, the landowner acted as the patriarch-landlord. He had the right not to let a serf girl out of his estate for marriage; even to marry a serf within one patrimony, the permission of the master was necessary. No laws on marriages between landlord peasants were issued.

Of particular importance for Russian culture was the influence of Western European Catholic views on marriage, which came to Russia through the mediation of Kievan literature. AT Catholic tradition The signing moment was the expressed consent of the spouses. The priest acted only as a witness to this consent. Marriage did not have to be concluded in the church, it could be concluded at home. This understanding of marriage was reflected in the Latin wedding ceremony. The Catholic breviary Rituale Romanum was published in Latin in 1615, and in 1634 in Polish in Krakow. As studies by M. Gorchakov 175 and A. S. Pavlov 176 have shown, Metropolitan Peter (Mohyla) of Kyiv included an article “On the Sacrament of Marriage” – “De sacramento matrimonii” into the Trebnik he published. The first part of it is an edited translation of an article from the Polish edition of Rituale Romanum. The second part is Ecthesis (“the simplest and shortest guide to determining the degrees of kinship and properties that prevent marriage”) of the chartophylax of the Church of Constantinople Manuel in the first quarter of the 16th century.

The article was transferred from the Treasury of Peter the Grave to the printed Kormchaya. The definition of marriage, which was included in the Treasury of Peter the Mohyla, and then in the Pilot, corresponds to the definition of the Roman Catechism of 1566 177: “Matrimony or legal marriage the mystery from Christ God is established, in the multiplication of the human race, and in the upbringing of children in the glory of God, in the insoluble bond of love and friendship, and in mutual help and in the hedgehog of the sin of fornication. The thing of this mystery is the husband and wife, in the communion of marriage honestly, apart from any obstacle to the right to copulate with pleasure. The form sit an image, or make it, are the words of those who copulate, their inner desire, admonishing before the priest” 178.

The consent of two persons entering into marriage, and their words, pronounced before the priest, give force to marriage in accordance with this definition.

The priest was instructed to find out if there were any obstacles to marriage between the spouses, which meant blood and spiritual kinship, and also “if their own waves of will, and not force them from their parents and relatives or from their masters,” they enter into marriage. The age for the couple was set for the young man - 15, for the girl - 12 years. In addition, the spouses were required to know the Symbol of Faith, the Lord's Prayer, the prayer "Our Lady of the Virgin", as well as the ten commandments, and an announcement was made in the church.

The consent of the spouses instead of the condition of marriage became a form of marriage. This idea was innovative for Russian culture, since, firstly, the emphasis shifted from the wedding ceremony itself to betrothal, and secondly, the need for the consent of the spouses limited the full power of the parents in the marriage issue. The article was included in the Kormchaya and thus received the status of church law. This article also did not comply with the norms of Byzantine legislation, which forbade marriage without parental consent.

The new rite of marriage was also included in the Ribbon of Patriarch Joachim of 1677, and as an obligatory rite began to influence the understanding of the essence of marriage. In addition to the ancient Russian rite of betrothal and wedding, it included preliminary questions to the bride and groom about their mutual consent to marriage and words and actions indicating the moment of the sacrament of marriage 179 . From the second half of the XVII century. the epistles of the hierarchs repeatedly contain a requirement for priests to ensure that marriages are not entered into under duress, both on the part of parents and masters. A.S. Pavlov pointed to a number of such messages: 1683 - Metropolitan Pavel of Ryazan, 1695 - Metropolitan Evfimy of Novgorod. Metropolitan Evfimy of Novgorod wrote: “Yes, you would have made an order for all the priests so that they would look for it firmly, people of all ranks would marry neither in the family, nor in the tribe, nor in nepotism, nor in matchmaking, nor in the brotherhood of the gods, and not from the living and a husband who has been tonsured by a wife, and a wife not from a living and tonsured husband, and not by a fourth marriage, and not in old age, and not by the will of the landowners and estate owners(highlighted by us. - E. B.), and then in the coronal memory to order to describe by name ”180. The decree of Patriarch Adrian of 1693 said: due to the fact that priests crown marriages without consent, "the life of those husbands and wives is poor and the children homeless" 181 .

Another change that this new article Pilots: a more strictly defined circle of persons who were forbidden to marry among themselves due to spiritual (up to the 7th degree), consanguinity (up to the 7th degree) or property (3rd degree). It was difficult for the priests to determine the degree of this relationship 182 . If it was discovered that the marriage was entered into in an unacceptable degree of kinship, it was declared invalid.

From the beginning of the XVIII century. marriage law becomes the subject of state legislation. The decrees of Peter I were aimed primarily at limiting the power of parents in marriage, as well as at reducing the "material" side of marriage. By decree of April 3, 1702, Peter forbade in-line entries in a marriage conspiracy, and the betrothal period was reduced to six weeks 183 . Spiritual authorities received the right to judge cases of forced marriage by parents of children, and lords of serfs 184 . By a decree of January 5, 1724, an oath was introduced by parents and spouses that marriage was performed voluntarily 185 . This oath lasted until 1775. In 1765, Catherine II abolished the crown commemorations 186, and in 1775 by a synodal decree, which ordered to perform "at the same, and not at different times, both betrothal and marriage", betrothal, as a separate act from weddings, was abolished 187 . The Synod motivated this decree by the fact that there are many abuses in the marriage business: children and slaves marry without the will of their parents and masters, parents and masters still force children to marry, “husbands from living wives, and wives from living husbands” enter into new marriages, and in the "peasantry they marry young children with wives of age, from which it happens that fathers-in-law fall into marriage with their daughters-in-law, and these young husbands kill their" 188 .

18th century legislation sought to clearly define the relationship of the spouses. The Rule of Deanery of 1782, which remained in force until 1917, did this in the following way: “Let a husband cling to his wife in harmony and love, respecting, protecting and excusing her shortcomings, alleviating her infirmities, delivering her food according to her condition and the possibilities of the owner... May the wife remain in love, in respect and obedience to her husband, and may she show him all pleasing and affection, like a mistress.

The researchers noted that the legislation of the XVIII century. consistently defended the property rights of women. A number of decrees established separation in the property of the spouses: the rights of the wife did not extend to the patrimonial estates and her husband's salaries, and the husband did not have rights to the estates of his wife, inherited from her relatives during marriage or as gifts. Spouses had the right to enter into an obligation between themselves to give or sell each other estates. Considering the property relations of the spouses, M. F. Vladimirsky-Budanov concluded that “Russian law has a distinctive character in its equality of property rights of both spouses” 190 .

The Petrine era was easy on divorce. As M. M. Shcherbatov wrote, “the passion of love, until then almost unknown in coarse morals, began to take possession of sensitive hearts” 191 . Peter I himself achieved the tonsure of his wife Evdokia Lopukhina, and, according to M. M. Shcherbatov, “an example of this violation of the sacrament of matrimony, inviolable in its essence, showed that it can be violated without punishment” 192 . Following the example of Peter I, Pavel Ivanovich Yaguzhinsky tonsured his first wife and married Golovkina, and “many others imitated this, and not only from nobles, but also from people of little rank, as Prince Boris Sontsev-Zasekin did this” 193.

However, the legislation begins to fight arbitrary divorces: already in the Appendix to the Spiritual Regulations, the tonsure of one of the spouses as a way of divorce is prohibited: “Do not accept a husband as a wife of a property. The custom is that a husband and wife mutually agree so that the husband becomes a monk, and the wife is free to marry someone else. This simple divorce seems to be right, but the Word of God is very contrary, if it is done for this single reason. And if the husband and wife, by mutual consent, allowed to take the monastic rite: and then, apart from other circumstances, look at the years of the wife, whether 50 or 60 years have passed, and whether they have children and how they are left. A number of decrees are issued to prohibit the hitherto common practice of "letters of divorce", which were sanctioned by the lower clergy. From the decree of 1730: “If some people with their wives, not going to the right court, will arbitrarily divorce each other, then immediately from now on to their spiritual fathers, do not put their hands on any letters of divorce in such divorces, under a heavy fine and punishment and deprivation of the priesthood. However, the tradition of issuing letters of divorce was stable, and in 1767 the Synod again issued a decree forbidding priests from writing letters of divorce, threatening them with defrocking 196 . The increase in the number of divorces was also greatly facilitated by the new order of staffing the army: long-term military service led to the fact that wives lived for years apart from their husbands, and this entailed bigamy. In the funds of the Holy Synod and diocesan consistories, many files have been preserved that testify to the prevalence of bigamy 197 .

However, although the state fought steadily against divorces, nevertheless, the Holy Synod also went to expand the reasons for them: the reference to the eternal hard labor of one of the spouses freed the other spouse from the marriage union. The Synod issues an order to the bishops: “Those who remained after being exiled to eternal work or into exile or imprisonment of their husbands to their wives, at their request ... to marry other husbands, according to the power of the announced Nominal 1720 and 1733. decrees permission to give on their own consideration" 198 .

Thus, even before the reforms of Peter I, the institution of marriage underwent significant changes. The consent of the spouses came to the fore already in the new articles included in the printed Pilot of 1653. This also corresponded to the spirit of the new time, which is characterized by the individualization of a person. But at the same time in the legislation of the XVIII century. there is a tendency to take a person's personal life under state control, so a divorce by mutual consent becomes unacceptable from the point of view of the state. The rejection of betrothal as an independent legal act canceled the contractual, legal part of marriage, shifting the focus to the wedding - the sacred part.

Plan

Introduction.

Old Russian society is a typically male, patriarchal civilization in which women occupy a subordinate position and are subjected to constant oppression and harassment. It is difficult to find a country in Europe where, even in the 18th-19th centuries, the beating of a wife by a husband would be considered a normal phenomenon and the women themselves would see this as proof of marital love. In Russia, this is confirmed not only by the testimonies of foreigners, but also by the studies of Russian ethnographers.

At the same time, Russian women have always played a significant role not only in the family, but also in the political and cultural life of Ancient Russia. Suffice it to recall the Grand Duchess Olga, the daughters of Yaroslav the Wise, one of whom - Anna became famous as the French Queen, the wife of Vasily I, the Grand Duchess of Moscow Sophia Vitovtovna, the Novgorod posadnitsa Martha Boretskaya, who led the struggle of Novgorod against Moscow, Princess Sophia, a whole series of empresses XVIII century, Princess Dashkova and others. In Russian fairy tales, there are not only images of militant Amazons, but also an unprecedented, by European standards, image of Vasilisa the Wise. European travelers and diplomats of the 18th - early 19th centuries. I was surprised by the high degree of independence of Russian women, the fact that they had the right to own property, dispose of estates, etc. French diplomat Charles-Francois Philibert Masson considers such a "gynecocracy" unnatural, Russian women remind him of the Amazons, whose social activity, including love relationship seems challenging to him.

1. The position of women in ancient Russia.

Women are rarely mentioned in chronicles. For example, in "The Tale of Bygone Years" there are five times fewer messages related to the fair sex than "male" ones. Women are considered by the chronicler mainly as a predicate of a man (however, like children). That is why in Russia, before marriage, a girl was often called after her father, but not in the form of a patronymic, but in a possessive form: Volodimerya, and after marriage - after her husband (in the same possessive, possessive form as in the first case; cf. turnover: husband's wife, i.e. belonging to her husband).

Perhaps the only exception to the rule was the mention of the wife of Prince Igor Novgorod-Seversky in the Tale of Igor's Campaign - Yaroslavna. By the way, this served as A.A. Zimin as one of the arguments to substantiate the late dating of the Lay. Very eloquently speaks of the position of a woman in the family, a quote from "worldly parables" cited by Daniil Zatochnik (XII century):

"Neither a bird is an owl in birds; nor a hedgehog in a beast; nor a fish in a cancer; nor cattle in a goat; nor a serf in a serf who works for a serf; nor a husband in a husband who listens to his wife."

Despotic orders, which became widespread in ancient Russian society, did not bypass the family either. The head of the family, the husband, was a serf in relation to the sovereign, but a sovereign in his own house. All household members, not to mention the servants and serfs in the truest sense of the word, were in his complete subordination. First of all, this applied to the female half of the house. It is believed that in ancient Russia, before marriage, a girl from a well-born family, as a rule, did not have the right to go beyond the parental estate. Her parents were looking for a husband, and she usually did not see him before the wedding.

After the wedding, her husband became her new "owner", and sometimes (in particular, in the case of his infancy - this happened often) and father-in-law. A woman could go outside the new house, not excluding church attendance, only with the permission of her husband. Only under his control and with his permission could she get to know anyone, have conversations with strangers, and the content of these conversations was also controlled. Even at home, a woman did not have the right to eat or drink secretly from her husband, give gifts to anyone or receive them.

In Russian peasant families, the share of female labor has always been unusually large. Often a woman had to take even a plow. At the same time, the labor of daughters-in-law, whose position in the family was especially difficult, was especially widely used.

The duties of the husband and father included "instructing" the household, which consisted in systematic beatings, to which the children and wife were to be subjected. It was believed that a man who does not beat his wife "does not build his own house" and "does not take care of his soul", and will be "destroyed" both "in this century and in the future." Only in the XVI century. society tried to somehow protect the woman, to limit the arbitrariness of her husband. So, "Domostroy" advised to beat his wife "not in front of people, to teach alone" and "do not get angry at all" at the same time. It was recommended “for any fault” (because of trifles) “don’t beat by sight, don’t beat with a fist, kick, or beat with a staff, don’t beat with any iron or wooden one.”

Such "restrictions" had to be introduced, at least as a recommendation, since in everyday life, apparently, husbands were not particularly shy about means when "explanating" with their wives. It was not for nothing that it was immediately explained that those who “beat like that from the heart or from the torment” have many parables from this: blindness and deafness, and the arm and leg will dislocate and the finger, and headache, and toothache, and pregnant wives (meaning they were beaten too!) and the child is injured in the womb " .

That is why advice was given to beat a wife not for every one, but only for a serious offense, and not with anything and in any way, but "take off your shirt, politely (carefully!) Beat with a whip, holding hands."

At the same time, it should be noted that in pre-Mongol Russia, a woman had a number of rights. She could become the heiress of her father's property (before marrying). The highest fines were paid by those guilty of "hitting" (rape) and insulting women with "shameful words." A slave who lived with her master as a wife became free after her master's death. The appearance of such legal norms in ancient Russian legislation testified to the widespread occurrence of such cases. The existence of entire harems among influential people is recorded not only in pre-Christian Russia (for example, Vladimir Svyatoslavich), but also at a much later time. So, according to the testimony of one Englishman, one of the close associates of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich poisoned his wife, because she expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that her husband keeps many mistresses at home. At the same time, in some cases, a woman, apparently, herself could become a real despot in the family. It is difficult, of course, to say what influenced the views of the authors and editors of the "Prayer" and "Words" popular in Ancient Russia, attributed to a certain Daniil Zatochnik - childhood impressions of the relationship between father and mother or their own bitter family experience, but in these works a woman does not at all look as defenseless and incomplete as it may appear from the foregoing. Let's hear what Daniel has to say.

"Or say, prince: marry a rich father-in-law; drink that, and eat that. Better shake me sick; shake more, shake, let go, and an evil wife dries to death ... Fornication in fornication, who will have an evil wife of profit dividing or father-in-law is rich. It would be better for me to see an ox in my house than an evil wife ... It would be better for me to cook iron than to be with an evil wife. .

Isn't it true that the preference (albeit jokingly) for the hardest craft - smelting the iron of life with an "evil" wife says something?

However, a woman gained real freedom only after the death of her husband. Widows were highly respected in society. In addition, they became full-fledged mistresses in the house. In fact, from the moment of the death of the spouse, the role of the head of the family passed to them.

In general, the wife had all the responsibility for housekeeping, for raising young children. Teenage boys were then transferred for training and education to "uncles" (in the early period, indeed, uncles on the maternal side - uyam, who were considered the closest male relatives, since the problem of establishing paternity, apparently, could not always be solved).

1.1. The position of a woman in the princely family

From a survey of the distribution of princely volosts, it is clear what an important share of them the princes usually gave to their wives. This rich endowment also corresponded to a strong moral and political influence, which was ceded to them according to the spiritual wills of their husbands. Kalita, in her will, orders her princess with her smaller children to her eldest son Semyon, who, by God, should be her mourner. Here, the testator does not prescribe to his sons, except for care, any obligations regarding his wife, because this wife, Princess Ulyana, was his stepmother. To what extent the stepmother and her children were then alien to the children from the first wife, the proof is that the son of Kalita, John II, does not call his stepmother otherwise than Princess Ulyana only, her daughter does not call her sister; this explains to us the ancient relationship of the sons and grandsons of Mstislav the Great to his son from another wife, Vladimir Mstislavich, macesichu. Otherwise, the relationship of sons to their mothers is determined according to the spiritual wills of the princes: Donskoy orders his children to the princess. “And you, my children,” he says, “live together, and obey your mother in everything; if one of my sons dies, then my princess will divide him with the inheritance of the rest of my sons: whoever she gives, that is what she has, and my children will not come out of her will. God will give me a son, and my princess will divide him, taking in parts from his big brothers. If any of my sons lose their fatherland, with which I blessed him, then my princess will divide my sons from their inheritances; and you, my children, obey your mother. If God takes away my son, Prince Vasily, then his inheritance goes to that son of mine who will be under him, and the inheritance of the last princess will divide my sons; but you, my children, obey your mother: whatever you give to whom, that is what you have. And I ordered my children to my princess; but you, my children, obey your mother in everything, do not act out of her will in anything. And whoever my son does not obey his mother will not have my blessing on.