One-day votive church

One-day votive churches (Russian: обыденная церковь, obydennaya tserkov) were churches built in medieval Russia to ward off epidemics.[1]

St Varlaam church in Pskov was built during a pestilence in one day in 1466 and was replaced by a stone building (pictured) in 1495.

Description

The one-day votive churches were built in one day from wood. They were simple in design and small in size, and usually lasted a limited time. The construction could start during the preceding night but had to be finished, and the church consecrated, before nightfall.

Usually these churches were erected on a site where no previous structure had stood and were built through communal labour. Such votive churches were believed to be effective against epidemics because none of the evil forces responsible for the pandemic could enter the churches during their uninterrupted construction.

Most of these churches were built in Novgorod, Pskov (nine churches between 1407 and 1532) and Muscovy in the 14th through 17th centuries, with both cities and rulers financing the construction.[2][3]

According to Russell Zguta, the appearance of such churches is a uniquely Russian response to the Black Death, and he compares them to the Western European response, which also involved religious rites, votive objects and churches.

The tradition declined and eventually disappeared as more rational anti-plague measures were gradually enacted.[4] The tradition of building churches in one day was linked with the Belarusian custom of weaving votive towels in one day to prevent or fight epidemics among livestock.[2]

No such churches have survived; however, there are several churches originally constructed in one day and later rebuilt in stone: Vsegradsky cathedral in Vologda (the name meaning '[constructed] by all of the town'), St Simeon church in Novgorod (ru) and St Varlaam church in Pskov (ru).[5]

References
  1. Byrne, Joseph Patrick (2012). "Churches, Plague". Encyclopedia of the Black Death. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598842531.
  2. Zelenin, Dmitry (1994). "Обыденные полотенца и обыденные храмы". Избранные труды. Статьи по духовной культуре 1901-1913 гг (in Russian). Индрик. pp. 208–213. ISBN 5857590078.
  3. Arakcheev, Vladimir (2004). Средневековый Псков. Власть, общество, повседневная жизнь в XV-XVII веках (in Russian). Псков. pp. 31–33. ISBN 5945421073.
  4. Zguta, Russell (1981). "The One-Day Votive Church: A Religious Response to the Black Death in Early Russia". Slavic Review. 40 (3): 423–432. doi:10.2307/2496195. JSTOR 2496195. PMID 11633170.
  5. Богуславский, В.В. (2004). Славянская энциклопедия XVII век. (в 2-х томах). Том. II (in Russian). ОЛМА-Пресс. Красный пролетарий. pp. 56–57. ISBN 5851971673.


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