Payments to the clergy (ruga) and «benevolent alms» in the XVIII–early XX century (based on the materials of the Olonets diocese)
Keywords:
religion, clergy, laity, clergy, church, income, alms, economy, subsistence.Abstract
The article discusses the issues of providing clergy with payments from parishioners (also known as ruga). This was the name of one of the types of more or less stable remuneration for pastoral service, which is widespread in Russia. It was established that in conditions of risky farming and in the presence of extremely insignificant payments to the clergy from the state, payments from parishioners were a significant help. They largely formed the budget of the families of priests and are often a condition for the survival of clerics. The exact amount of payments from parishioners was often not determined either by legislation or by an agreement between clergy and laity when a priest or acolyte joined the parish. To a large extent, the quantitative characteristics of payments from parishioners and even the very probability of their issuance depended on the personal relationship between the clergy and parishioners. In the end, the payment from parishioners turned into an effective means of collective control over the clergy by the laity and placed the clergy in an unequal and dependent position on them.
