The "Domostroi"

Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible

Carolyn Johnston Pouncy

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780801471667
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: History

A manual on household management, the Domostroi is one of the few sources on the social history and secular life of Russia in the time of Ivan the Terrible. It depicts a society that prized religious orthodoxy, reliance on tradition, and absolute subordination of the individual to the family and the state. Specific instructions tell how to arrange hay, visit monasteries, distill vodka, treat servants, entertain clergy, cut out robes, and carry out many other daily activities. Carolyn Johnston Pouncy here offers, with an informative introduction, the first complete English translation.

THE

DOMOSTROI

Contents

Most material is taken from the Short Version of the Domostroi; titles given in italics indicate material from other versions. The original tables of contents are given in the Appendix.

Preface

1. A Father’s Instruction to His Son

2. How Christians Should Believe in the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Mother of God, the Cross of Christ, the Holy Heavenly Powers, and All Holy Relics, and Must Worship Them

3. How One Should Partake of the Divine Sacraments, Believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, Prepare for Judgment Day, and Treat Holy Objects

4. How One Should Love God with One’s Whole Heart, and One’s Brother Also. How One Should Fear God and Remember Death

5. How One Should Revere Bishops, Priests, and Monks

6. How One Should Visit Monasteries, Hospitals, Prisons, and the Unfortunate

7. How One Should Honor Tsars and Princes, Obey Them in Everything, and Serve Faithfully. How to Act Toward All People—Whether Great or Small, Unfortunate, and Weak. How One Should Keep Watch Over Oneself

8. How One Should Decorate One’s Home with Holy Icons and Keep a Clean House

9. How One Should Make an Offering to Churches and Monasteries

10. How One Should Invite Priests and Monks to One’s House to Pray

11. How One Should Express Gratitude to God While Entertaining Guests

10. How One Should Invite Priests and Monks to One’s House to Pray

11. How You and Your Servants Should Express Gratitude to God While Entertaining Guests

12. How a Man Should Pray at Home with His Wife and His Servants

13. How Men and Women Should Pray in Church, Preserve Their Chastity, and Do No Evil

14. How Children Should Honor Their Spiritual Fathers and Submit to Them

15. How to Raise Your Children with All Learning and in Fear of God

16. How to Amass a Dowry for a Daughter’s Marriage

17. How to Teach Children and Save Them with Fear

18. How Children Must Love Their Fathers and Mothers, Protect and Obey Them, and Make Their Lives Peaceful

19. How Every Person Must Begin His Craft or Any Work with a Blessing

20. In Praise of Women

21. Instruction to a Husband and Wife, Their Servants and Children, on How They Must Live Well

22. What Kind of People to Hire and How to Instruct Them in God’s Commandments and Domestic Management

23. How Christians Should Heal Themselves of Illness and Every Affliction

24. On the Unrighteous Life

25. On the Righteous Life

26. How a Person Should Live by Gathering His Resources Together

27. If Someone Lives without Considering His Means

28. If Someone Keeps More Slaves Than He Can Afford

29. A Husband Must Teach His Wife How to Please God and Her Husband, Arrange Her Home Well, and Know All That Is Necessary for Domestic Order and Every Kind of Handicraft, So She May Teach and Supervise Servants

30. How a Good Woman Supervises Her Domestics’ Needlework. What to Cut Out and How You Should Keep the Scraps and Snippets

31. How to Cut Out a Robe. How You Should Keep the Scraps and Snippets

32. How to Maintain Domestic Order

33. [How] the Mistress Must Oversee Her Servants’ Domestic Work and Crafts Every Day. How She Must Watch Her Own Behavior

34. [How] a Wife Must Consult Her Husband and Ask His Advice Every Day. How a Woman Should Act While Visiting and What She Should Talk about with Guests

35. How to Teach Your Servants to Run Errands

36. Instruction to Women and Servants on Drunkenness. And on Secrets, Which You Should Never Keep. How You Should Not Listen to Servants’ Lies or Calumnies without Correcting Them. How to Correct Them with Fear, and Your Wife Also. And How to Be a Guest and How to Manage Your Household in Every Way

37. How a Woman Should Care for Clothing

38. How to Arrange the Domestic Utensils

39. If a Man Does Not Teach His Household Himself, He Will Receive Judgment from God. If He Acts Well Himself and Teaches His Wife and Servants, He Will Receive Mercy from God

40. How the Master or His Deputy Should Buy Supplies to Last the Year

41. What to Do with Goods from Faraway Lands

42. On the Same Subject. How Someone Who Has No Villages Should Buy Supplies for Summer and Winter. How to Raise Animals at Home and Always Have Enough Food for Them

43. How Order Depends on Storing Supplies Needed throughout the Year, and for Fasts as Well

44. How One Should Lay in Supplies in Advance

45. How to Cultivate a Kitchen Garden and Orchard

46. How a Man Must Keep Liquor Stored for Himself and His Guests. How to Present this Liquor to Company

47. A Brewing Lesson for That Same Young Man. How to Brew Beer, Make Mead, and Distill Vodka

48. How a Steward Must Supervise Cooks and Bakers

49. How a Man Must Consult His Wife Before Giving Orders to the Steward concerning the Dining Area, Cooking, and Breadmaking

50. Order to a Steward: How to Arrange a Feast

51. Instruction from a Master to His Steward on How to Feed the Family in Feast and Fast

52. Concerning the Care of Goods Stored in Granaries and in Corn Bins

53. How You Should Manage the Drying Room in the Same Way

54. How to Preserve Food in the Cellar and the Icehouse

55. How the Steward Must Arrange Items in the Storerooms and Barns according to the Master’s Instructions

56. How You Should Arrange Hay in the Haylofts and Horses in the Stables, Stack Firewood in the Courtyard, and Care for Animals

57. What to Do with Waste Produced in Kitchens, Bakeries, and Workrooms

58. How the Master Should Often Check the Cellars, Icehouses, Granaries, Drying Rooms, Barns, and Stables

59. How the Master, Meeting with His Servants, Should Reward Them as They Deserve

60. Concerning Traders and Shopkeepers: Check Their Accounts Often

61. How to Maintain a Homestead, Shop, Barn, or Village

62. How the Homestead Tax Should Be Paid, and the Taxes on a Shop or Village, and How Debtors Should Pay All Their Debts

63. Instruction to a Steward, How to Store Preserved Food in the Cellar: Food in Tubs, Boxes, Measures, Vats, and Pails; Meat, Fish, Cabbage, Cucumbers, Plums, Lemons, Caviar, and Mushrooms

64. A Father’s Epistle Instructing His Son

64. Books That Tell What Foods People Put on the Table throughout the Year

65. Recipes for All Sorts of Fermented Honey Drinks: How to Distill Mead; Make Juice, Kvass, and Beer; Brew with Hops and Distill Boiled Mead

66. Recipes for Various Vegetables, Including Turnips

67. Wedding Rituals

Preface

This is an admonition and instruction of father-confessors to all Orthodox Christians. It tells you how you must believe in the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Mother of God, Christ’s cross, and the heavenly powers and must make obeisance to holy relics and all other holy objects. It tells you to honor the tsar, his princes, and boyars.1 For the apostle says:

Discharge your obligations to all men; pay tax and toll,2 reverence and respect, to those to whom they are due. [Romans 13:7]

But if you are doing wrong, then you will have cause to fear them; it is not for nothing that they hold the power of the sword [Romans 13:4]

You wish to have no fear of the authorities? Then continue to do right and you will have their approval [Romans 13:3]

That is why you are obliged to submit. It is an obligation imposed not merely by fear of retribution but by conscience. [Romans 13:5]

Then you will be a chosen vessel and will carry the King’s name in your heart.3 This book also tells you how you must honor bishops, priests, and monks. You should take advantage of their services, asking them for prayers to bless your house and seeking their advice on all issues, both sacred and profane. You should pay diligent attention to your confessors also, heeding their admonitions as though they came from God’s own lips. Herein you will also find someone’s discourse on secular life, how Orthodox Christians should conduct themselves in the world and with their wives, children, and servants.4 You will learn how you should teach them and punish them, saving them with fear and weakening their resistance with dread.5 You should watch over them always, that they may be pure both spiritually and corporally. You yourself should be their guard in all matters, and should worry about them as about your own limbs. For the Lord says, “The two shall become one flesh.” [Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8]. And the apostle says, “If one organ suffers, they all suffer.” [1 Corinthians 12:26]. Therefore, you must worry not only about yourself, but about your wife, your children, your relatives, unto the least of your servants. For all are united by a single love of God, and by means of this good diligence of yours. Love all those who live according to God. You will be the eye of the heart, looking toward God. You will be a chosen vessel, bringing not only your own self to God but many.6 And you will hear, as though in your own voice, the joyful cry of the good and faithful servant.7

In addition, you will find in this book a treatise on domestic management, how to instruct your wife and children and servants, how to have in stock all necessary supplies—bread and meat, fish and vegetables—and how to keep order in the household, again, as among the heretics.8 In all, you will find sixty-seven chapters.9

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The Preface is added from the Long Version of the Domostroi.

1. Boyar (boiarin, pl. boiare): officially, one of a small group of men chosen from among the heads of the oldest princely and non titled service families to act as the tsar’s closest counselors. There were about forty of these in the mid-sixteenth century. More generally, any senior male from these old and very elite families. There is no exact English equivalent to boyar. On the boyars, see Kollmann, Kinship and Politics, and Crummey, Aristocrats and Servitors.

2. The Domostroi has “urok, urok” (a lesson where a lesson is due) instead of the usual “obrok, obrok.” Obrok, here translated as “tax,” is a rent paid in cash or kind.

3. A reference to Acts 9:15: “But the Lord said to him, ‘You must go, for this man is my chosen instrument [King James version: “a chosen vessel”] to bring my name before the nations and their kings, and before the people of Israel.’”

4. Domochadtsy. The Russian word means “bondsman” or “slave.”

5. Dread: groza. This Russian word means “thunderstorm,” and by extension the awe-inspiring and unpredictable power of a strong ruler. Its best-known application is to Ivan IV, known in English as “the Terrible” (i.e., he who inspires terror). Groznyi has a positive connotation that the English equivalent has lost.

6. Another reference to Acts 9:15.

7. Reference to the parable of the ten talents (Matthew 25:14–30).

8. Probably Roman Catholics, as Russian heretics in the sixteenth century were neither numerous nor organized enough to be writing domestic literature.

9. Originally, the manuscript said “sixty-three chapters”; the 3 was scratched out and replaced by a 7, presumably when the last four chapters (written on separate quires in the oldest manuscript) were added to the book.

1. A Father’s Instruction to His Son

I sinful N., bless, teach, admonish, and instruct my son N., his wife,1 their children, and domestic servants to live according to every Christian law and in all pure conscience and justice. Do God’s will faithfully and keep His commandments. Always live lawfully, fearing God. Teach your wife to do this also. Admonish your servants—not with blows or hard labor, but by keeping them, like children, rested, well-fed and clothed, in a warm house, and under good governance.

I give you this work on the Christian life as a reminder, to instruct you and your children. If you do not heed my work, if you disobey our commands,2 if you do not live according to these precepts or act on these recommendations, you will answer for yourselves on Judgment Day. I will not share in your guilt and sin, but will answer only for my own soul, for I have blessed, wept, prayed, and taught on ...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Domostroi
• Appendix: Contents of Manuscripts
• Glossary
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Printed Editions of the Domostroi