Catherine and the convents: The 1764 secularization of the church lands and its effect on the lives of Russian nuns

Throughout the eighteenth century, the rulers of Russia sought to increase their power over Russian society, both to create more order within the country and to accumulate the finances necessary to participate on the European stage. This study centers upon Catherine II's secularization of the lands of the Russian Orthodox Church as a major event illustrative of this process, and as the culmination of the Russian rulers' fascination with the wealth of the church. The secularization of 1764 signaled a conclusion to the struggle by Russian rulers to subordinate the church and its wealth to the needs of the state. In addition, the secularization of the church lands had a devastating effect on the Russian Church. This dissertation presents the changes that occurred in the lives of Russian nuns, after the loss of income from the ecclesiastical lands, as an illustration of the church's loss of power and economic autonomy in the eighteenth century.; Using translations and analyses of legislation from the Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, this dissertation argues that Catherine II's secularization was not a break with the past, but was instead a continuation of reforms instituted by her eighteenth-century predecessors. Catherine decided early in her reign to seize the lands of the church, and created the Commission on the Church Lands to create a shtat which would provide government salaries for the clergy after their lands had been transferred to state ownership. This Commission designed a structure for the support of the clergy which closed more than half of the monasteries, turning the monastics in them out into the cold. The problem of too many monastics with no government support and no official residence would force the Commission to make adjustments to the shtaty in the years following secularization.; Russian nuns suffered greater losses as a result of secularization than did the Russian monks. The annual stipends paid by the government to female monasteries were smaller than those paid to male monasteries. The ratio of female to male monasteries decreased following secularization, and female monasteries became more crowded than male monasteries. The challenges faced by these women, and their responses to these challenges, served as a window into the larger process of secularization.