The Wandering Church
-K. Kozhurin
But even if I am greatly sinful before God, I only recall the words of the saints: “Hold fast,” they said, “to the traditions of the elders, as they learned from their fathers.” However, heresies and schisms in the Church, according to the holy scriptures, are judged to be nothing other than a failure to align with the power of the Word as it is written, but instead to wander in one’s own way and not to follow the fathers in unity. Even if we live in peace with the entire universe, associating with all people together and maintaining love, yet if we fall into discord with God and His saints, such schismatics and dividers of the Church will be judged by God, for they have torn the body of the Church through disunity and disagreement with the fathers. — Monk Euthymius, Justification for Separation from the Filippovtsy
In the Book of Faith, sacred to every Old Believer, it is stated what must be done to save one’s soul after the reign of the Antichrist in the world: “Despise all the wretchedness and vanity of this world.” At the same time, the faithful were not only to “fear God and be vigilant” but also to “endure the harshness of persecution.” Each Old Believer community and each individual Old Believer determined for themselves the degree of compromise with the hostile world that they could accept without serious harm to their faith or the salvation of their soul. However, the stranniki (wanderers), or beguny (runners), rejected any compromise entirely, categorically denying the possibility of salvation in an Antichrist-ruled world.
The question of the origins of the wandering community (strannicheskoe soglasie) has not yet been definitively resolved. The Old Believer historian Pavel Lyubopytny attributes the founding of this community to a certain Andrian the Monk (1701–1768), about whom he writes: “A Yaroslavl townsman and resident of its environs, a defector from the Filippovtsy church, a crude literalist… A willful man, rebellious in spirit, and deeply superstitious… renowned among the crowd of false saints and ignorants.” N.I. Kostomarov considered the Yaroslavl Fedoseevtsy, Ivan and Andrian, to be the founders of the wandering movement. Feodosy Vasilyev himself taught: “Flee and hide in the name of Christ.” In principle, wandering ascetics could be found in nearly every Old Believer community. However, most modern researchers agree that the founder of the wandering movement as a distinct, organized movement within Russian Old Belief was a certain monk named Euthymius.
Little is known about Euthymius. We do not even know his secular name—Euthymius was the name given to him at his second (wandering) baptism. He was born in Pereslavl-Zalessky in 1743 or 1744. According to some sources, he was a townsman of Pereslavl, sufficiently literate and devoted to serving God from a young age. Others considered him a peasant of the landowner Motovilov from the Pereslavl district. Still others claimed he came from the clerical estate and was even a bishop’s chorister. During the first recruitment after the third census of 1764, under the reign of Catherine II, at the age of twenty-one, he was conscripted into military service, “but soon thereafter he fled and lived under the guise of a wanderer, in hiding.” However, the primary motivation for his wandering was not the hardship of military service but the desire to save his soul. As recorded in a wandering manuscript, Euthymius “began to seek a refuge, not merely to live out the course of this life, but to achieve the salvation of his soul and not to spend his days on this earth in vain, for which man was created.”
Under the guise of a wanderer, Euthymius arrived in Moscow, where he met the local Filippovtsy living at the Bratsky Court (in Dur noy Lane) and decided to stay with them. Embracing their strict asceticism, he underwent the Filippovtsy baptism and was given the name Eustathius. Skilled in manuscript copying, he began transcribing books, painting icons, and creating miniatures for illustrated Apocalypses. During this period, he also wrote his own works about Old Believer elders, defending the Pomorian teachings against the Fedoseevtsy (On the Fedoseevtsy Community and All Their Vices and Differences from Pomorian Christians).
However, Euthymius was soon captured by the police and sent back to Pereslavl-Zalessky. The local townspeople’s society conscripted him into the army again, but he escaped once more and returned to Moscow—this time not to the Filippovtsy but to the Fedoseevtsy at Preobrazhenka, likely because it was safer there (this was a time when the Fedoseevtsy and Filippovtsy communities were growing closer). During this period, Euthymius took monastic vows and formed a close bond with a Filippovtsy monk named Feodosy, a former bishop’s chorister and also a fugitive soldier. The monks did not stay long at Preobrazhenka; the Moscow elders, noting their lack of residence permits, advised them “for safety and spiritual salvation” to move to Pomorie, to one of the Filippovtsy sketes. Euthymius heeded this advice and, together with Irina Fedorova, a fugitive peasant woman and follower of the Filippovtsy, set out for the Topozero skete in the Arkhangelsk province.
Euthymius spent two years in the Topozero skete. Observing the Filippovtsy skete dwellers, he concluded that they were not radical enough in their rejection of the Antichrist’s world, accusing them of “double-mindedness and duplicity” for making certain compromises with the authorities and submitting to “civil laws.” This was because, as early as 1716, under Peter I, a decree was issued allowing the existence of Old Believers, who were previously outlawed. According to this decree, “registered Old Believers” listed in the “schismatic census” were subject to double taxation, required to wear distinctive clothing, and marked with special signs. By the late 18th century, some Filippovtsy had agreed to register with the authorities as “schismatics.” Believing that acknowledging oneself as a “schismatic” was detrimental to the soul of a true Christian, Euthymius “began to seek ways to perfect himself without doubt, but he could not calm his conscience.” To resolve his doubts, he wrote a treatise consisting of 39 questions and sent it to the leaders of the Moscow Filippovtsy, Alexey Yakovlev (Balchuzhny), Nikita Spitsyn, and others, but he received no response.
Initially, Euthymius considered traveling to the Vyg community, but upon reflection, he concluded that the Vygovtsy “had been corrupted long ago,” led by the Samarins “to such a compromise that they prayed nominally for the tsars,” and after the deaths of Andrey Denisov and Daniil Vikulin, they “abandoned the rites and all caution in their way of life, falling into neglect and introducing many harmful practices.” He also considered going to Kimry (a Filippovtsy spiritual center in Tver province), where Old Believers who had separated from the Filippovtsy for the same reasons as Euthymius—due to registration and the label of “schismatic”—resided. However, for unknown reasons, this plan was not realized.
Finally, Euthymius met a wandering elder named Ioann, who, as an Old Believer, had lived “in hiding” since youth and was never registered in any census. This fateful encounter inspired Euthymius to embrace wandering. “With him, Euthymius had frequent interactions, discussing his doubts and seeking to perfect himself through him; Ioann was his advisor in all conversations.” In 1784, under Ioann’s influence, Euthymius decided that no one associated with the Antichrist should participate in baptism or rebaptism. He earnestly requested Ioann to baptize him, but Ioann refused and advised Euthymius to “baptize himself.” As a result, in 1772, Euthymius baptized himself “into wandering” with the name Euthymius, thereby founding a new Old Believer community—the “Wandering Church.”
After his new baptism, Euthymius headed to Yaroslavl. The Yaroslavl region featured the impenetrable Poshekhonsky forests, ideal for hiding. By this time, Euthymius’s teachings had fully taken shape.
Settling in the Yaroslavl province, Euthymius sharply criticized the Filippovtsy, writing a treatise titled On the Current Disagreement in the Ancient Church Confession with the Antichrist’s Priests (1784), in which he stated: “Those Christians who hide behind impious priests or Nikonite clergy, when needing to travel somewhere, to avoid being detained as fugitives, first go to the impious living together, bow to them, and request a release letter to obtain a stamped passport. Then they go to the village priest, as if to their spiritual father, bow to him, and ask for his signature. From there, they go to the state office, submit the passport to the officials who bear the image of some beast, and receive stamped passports, which describe all their features. Have such Christians not condemned themselves by associating with the wicked?”
In his treatise, Euthymius also criticized other priestless Old Believer communities that had compromised with the world to varying degrees: the Fedoseevtsy for not dissolving “heretical and pagan marriages” and rejecting the “monastic rite,” the New Pomorians for accepting prayers for “heretical authorities,” the New Married for accepting church marriage, and the Filippovtsy for considering the wandering community heretical. “In these last days of the Antichrist’s deception, what is the salvific path for those in the faith? Is it the broad path, concerned with home, wife, children, trade, and possessions, or the narrow, difficult, and sorrowful path of having no city, village, or home?” Reinterpreting Feodosy Vasilyev’s call to “flee and hide in the name of Jesus Christ,” Euthymius wrote in one of his letters to Moscow elders: “It is fitting to hide and flee.”
Having begun to hide in the Poshekhonsky forests, Euthymius soon found his first followers. These included Pavel Vasilyev, his aforementioned companion Irina Fedorova, Ekaterina Andreevna Dushina (the daughter of a Yaroslavl townsman), Egor Egorov with his two young daughters, an elderly Fedoseevtsy man named Pavel from St. Petersburg, and a harborer named Pyotr Fyodorov. They were supported by a Yaroslavl merchant woman, Matrena Fyodorovna Pastukhova.
However, one of Euthymius’s followers, Pavel, was soon captured by the authorities and exiled to Siberia, forcing the Poshekhonsky wanderers to move to the Galich forests in the Kostroma province, where they built a shared cell. They stayed there for only two years before moving to the village of Malyshevo and then returning to Yaroslavl.
Euthymius died on July 20, 1792, in Yaroslavl and was buried according to the wandering rite in the Yamsky forest. The wanderers sacredly preserved his memory, holding an annual memorial service on the day of his death. Among his works, the Decalogue Flower Garden was the most revered in the wandering community, frequently copied by hand by his followers. In the Flower Garden, Euthymius denounced the “sins” and “vices” of “Old Believers”—his term for those followers of Old Orthodoxy who, in one way or another, compromised with the authorities and registered as “schismatics.” The wanderers themselves preferred to call themselves “true Orthodox wandering Christians.”
Euthymius’s work was continued by his former companion, Irina Fedorova, who, after his death, moved from Yaroslavl to the village of Sopelki, located on the right bank of the Volga, 15 versts from Yaroslavl, near the Velikorechka stream. From then on, Sopelki became the true capital of the wandering community, which was sometimes called the “Sopelki community” for this reason.
Gradually, the community spread to other provinces of the Russian Empire, forming a vast network of secret prayer houses and shelters for wanderers across the country. However, the Yaroslavl province remained the core of the wandering community. According to a report by an official from the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent to investigate in the 1850s, “half of the province, openly or secretly, belonged to the schism.” A distinctive feature of the Yaroslavl province’s population was that a significant portion of the male population left for extended periods to work in large cities, while women were primarily responsible for fieldwork. Thus, a wandering, itinerant lifestyle was widespread among Yaroslavl residents. Additionally, the province was home to numerous so-called kelii (cells) and keleinitsy (female cell-dwellers), who performed Old Rite services in their homes, sang, read, taught literacy, and trained their successors. Their numbers were considerable: in 1853, in the Romanovo-Borisoglebsky district alone (excluding the city itself), there were 2,374 keleinitsy. In the village of Shagati (part of the Yaroslavl Demidov Lyceum estate), there were up to 84 cells!
For a long time (over half a century), the wandering community remained unnoticed by the official authorities. Yaroslavl Old Believers lived “in hiding” (hence another name for this community—skrytniki, or “hiders”). The local New Rite clergy, tasked with reporting the presence of “schismatics” in their parishes to higher authorities, concealed the true extent of the wandering movement for several reasons. On one hand, New Rite priests feared being seen as weak or incapable of combating the “schism,” which could lead to accusations of neglecting their flock. On the other hand, they were reluctant to forgo the substantial “spiritual tribute” that flowed generously into their pockets from “schismatics” who paid to be recorded as having attended confession or to be allowed to bury their coreligionists according to the old rites.
It was not until the 1830s that vague reports about the new community began to emerge, and in the early 1850s, the community was discovered by the authorities. This happened by chance. A gang of fugitive soldiers engaged in banditry and pillaging nearby villages appeared in the Poshekhonsky forests. An investigation was launched, led by Count Stenbock. As a result, the secret prayer houses and hiding places of the skrytniki were uncovered, and some peculiarities of the wanderers’ doctrine became known.
The doctrine of the wanderers brought to its logical conclusion the complete rejection of the world under the reign of the Antichrist. However, from the outset, the wanderers understood the coming of the Antichrist not spiritually or allegorically, but in a literal, tangible sense. For instance, amid intensifying persecutions of Old Believers, they concluded that the Antichrist was a concrete person—the tsar (emperor). Monk Euthymius taught (essentially reiterating an older idea) that the tangible Antichrist had come to power in the person of Emperor Peter I and his successors, who were seen as heirs of Peter-the-Antichrist and executors of his will. “The apocalyptic beast is the tsarist power, its image is civil authority, and its work is spiritual authority.” From this stemmed the central tenet of the wandering doctrine: to save one’s soul, one must completely sever ties with society and reject all visible signs of the Antichrist’s power. Statements such as “I do not recognize the tsar’s authority over me,” “I do not consider him a Christian,” and “I acknowledge the necessity of the tsar and authorities, but one who orders Christians to be imprisoned is not a tsar but a tormentor” were frequently heard from wanderers arrested by the police during the reign of Nicholas I, the “missionary on the throne.” Thus, the wanderers associated any form of authority in the Russian Empire after Peter I with the workings of the Antichrist. Consequently, they refused any connection with the “Antichrist’s world”: they did not register in censuses, paid no taxes, owned no real property, held no passports (“the seal of the Antichrist”), and had no fixed place of residence. When arrested by the police, they claimed to “not remember their kin.”
Moving from place to place, the wanderers used special “passports”—unique sheets of paper serving as identification for trusted individuals. On one hand, these were a clear parody of the passport system introduced in Russia in 1719 by Peter-the-Antichrist, as the wandering “passports” followed the format of travel permits, specifying the owner’s occupation, age, residence, physical characteristics, duration, purpose, and destination of travel. On the other hand, these distinctive documents of Old Believer literature reflected the worldview, ideology, and artistic thought of their authors. The wandering “passports” were, in essence, Symbols of Faith for the “Wandering Church.” They often included quotes from Holy Scripture and Orthodox prayers. The most comprehensive example of such a “passport” from the Sopelki community is cited in P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky’s novel On the Hills:
“This bearer, a servant of Jesus Christ, named so-and-so, is released from Jerusalem, the city of God, to various cities and villages for the sustenance of the soul, and for the affliction of the sinful body. He is to engage in righteous labors and works, to toil diligently, to eat and drink with restraint, to not contradict anyone, but only to glorify God; to fear not those who kill the body, but to fear God and be strengthened by patience, to walk the righteous path in Christ, so that demons may not detain the servant of God anywhere. Establish me, O Lord, to stand in Your holy commandments, and from the East—You, O Christ—to the West, that is, to the Antichrist, may I not stray. The Lord is my light and my Savior—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defender of my life—of whom shall I be afraid? Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. My peace is God, my refuge is Christ, my protector and enlightener is the Holy Spirit. If I do not keep this, I shall weep and lament greatly thereafter. And whoever fears to receive me, a wanderer, into their home, does not wish to know my Lord, and my King and Lord is Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God. Whoever persecutes me for my faith openly prepares themselves for hell with the Antichrist. This passport is issued from the City of the Most High God, from the Sion police, from the Golgotha quarter. Attached to this passport are the Anno Domini, the invisible hands of many holy fathers, to fear the terrible and eternal torments. This passport is issued from the aforementioned date for one century, and upon its expiration, I am to appear at the appointed place—the Terrible Judgment of Christ. My characteristics and age are recorded for the joy of the coming age. This passport is presented to the saints’ department and recorded in the book of life under the number of the coming age.”
Additionally, wanderers embarking on long journeys carried special prayers (resembling ancient Russian incantations)—“for those going forth” and “for those returning”—either in handwritten notebooks or memorized. These “prayers” often included itineraries, allowing wanderers to move freely from one settled harborer to another. Here is an example of such a “prayer”:
“To Ekaterinburg, to Tomsk, to Barnaul, up the Katurna River to Krasny Yar, the village of Aka, where there is a chapel and the village of Ustba. In Ustba, ask for the harborer Pyotr Kirilov, visit his lodging. There are many more lodgings there. The Snowy Mountains: these mountains stretch for 300 versts, standing in full view from Alam. Beyond the mountains lies the village of Damascus; there is a chapel in that village; the superior is the monk-schemer John. In that monastery, there is a 40-day journey with rest, through the Kizhiskaya land, then a 4-day journey to Tatania, where the Voseon state lies. They live in the bay of the ocean sea: a place called Belovodye and Lake Love, with 100 islands, and on them mountains, and in the mountains live those who emulate Christ’s Church, Orthodox Christians, and with this, I ask the willing Orthodox Christians; we assure all Orthodox Christians, without any deceit, who wish to follow in Christ’s footsteps. There can be no Antichrist in that place, nor will there be, and in that place, there are dark forests, high mountains, rocky crevices; and the people there are truly without barbarism, and if all the Chinese were Christians, not a single soul would perish… Lovers of Christ, follow the aforementioned path! Driven from their land by the lord, five hundred years ago, two elders of the Syrian (Assyrian—K.K.) churches… Russian churches, 44 in number, and their Christian metropolitans were taken from the Syrian patriarch, and they departed from their places since the time of Patriarch Nikon, and their arrival was from Zosima and Savvaty, the holy miracle-workers of Solovki, by ships through the icy sea. And in this way, the fathers sent by Zosima and Savvaty searched. This record was written by myself, I was there, and I, the sinful monk Michael, wrote to you with my own hand, and with the brethren in Christ.”
The first dispute within the wandering community arose between the followers of Irina Fedorova—peasants Pyotr Kraynev and Yakov Yakovlev—regarding the conditions for acceptance into the community. Yakov Yakovlev, adhering to the most radical view, close to Euthymius’s own, taught that only those who actively hide and wander could be considered members of the Wandering Church. Pyotr Kraynev, supported by the elder Irina, held a different opinion (essentially the first compromise). Pyotr believed that those who remained at home but vowed to take up wandering could also be accepted into the community. As a result of this heated dispute, Yakovlev left Sopelki. However, when Yakovlev, who had been arrested and was on his way to exile in Siberia, later met with Yaroslavl wanderers, he did not condemn them.
Since the dispute between Yakov Yakovlev and Pyotr Kraynev, many so-called zhilovye (settled ones) joined the wandering community. Indeed, the existence and widespread presence of the uncompromising wandering community in a police state were possible because the wanderers were divided into two groups: the kryushchiesya (hiders) and the strannoprimtsy (harborers). The hiders were individuals who completely severed all ties with the “world,” owning no property, documents, homes, or families, living a monastic lifestyle. The harborers, or settled ones, led a sedentary life and maintained “shelters” for the hiders, who moved from place to place, preaching and hiding from the temptations of the outside world. These shelters were equipped with secret hiding places for the hiders, such as pits under staircases, closets, behind walls, or under double roofs. Often, a hiding place in one house was connected to another, and another, with the final hiding place leading to a garden, grove, or main road, allowing easy escape from the police.
Among the settled ones were many wealthy individuals—merchants and prosperous peasants—who were not indifferent to the salvation of their souls. In essence, the settled ones were not full members of the wandering community (for example, they could not participate in communal prayer or meals with the hiders). Their role was akin to that of catechumens in the early Christian Church. Over time, they could become full members of the Wandering Church, typically in old age, by receiving baptism “into wandering.” In cases of illness or other dangerous circumstances, a harborer would be baptized, and if they survived, they were required to leave their home, property, and family to take up wandering.
In general, the wanderers’ doctrine allowed only one concession to the “world”—the use of money. However, in the first quarter of the 19th century, a new dispute arose among the wanderers: could a wanderer accept money? In their cells, wanderers conducted private worship, praying from the Psalter or performing prostrations with the prayer rope (lestovka). Before and after sleep, they performed the “beginning”—a short prayer rule with prostrations.
From 1850, when the authorities discovered the wanderers, a new period began in the community’s life. Mass repressions, the destruction of major wandering centers, and the arrests of mentors and prominent figures of the Wandering Church led to significant changes in their internal life and doctrine. As a result, in the 1860s, a new community emerged among the wanderers. Its founder was the renowned wandering mentor Nikita Semyonovich Kiselev, author of the Small Image of Heresies, an apostle of the wandering movement who traveled with fiery sermons of his teachings not only through the Poshekhonsky and Vologda forests but also to many other Russian cities, including Moscow.
K.Ya. Kozhurin Spiritual Teachers of Hidden Russia – St. Petersburg: “Piter,” 2007