The Confession Problem of the Ukrainian Orthodox Population in the 19th Century (on the Basis of the Confessionals of Kamianetsky District of the Podillia Province)

Abstract

The purpose of the article, based on materials from the confessional information of the Orthodox parishes of the Kamenets district of the Podillia province, examines the reasons and factors that led to church attendance and the failure to conduct the holy sacrament of confession during Great Lent by the Ukrainian population in the 19th century. The research methodology. In the context of the introduction of the anthropological approach in the historiography, attention was paid to the personified and family examples of the common people regarding their possible motives for not confessing. The method of critical analysis is used in the study of church statistical documentation, because the sources were created by representatives of the parish clergy with different levels of education and executive discipline. According to the work algorithm of the deconstruction method, the necessary information was extracted from the content part of the sources. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the determining factors and probable conditions that corrected the confessional behavior of the Orthodox laity of the above-mentioned period are singled out. Conclusions. In any location, a person had to go through the rite of confession. The confessor had to sincerely acknowledge his sins before the priest, confirm his intention to correct them, believe in God and hope for His lenity. The parishioners' attendance at the holy sacrament was recorded in confessional records, in which the priests indicated the reasons for their absence from confession with various notes. The most common entry was «in the absence», with no explanation of detailed motives. Among other influential factors that changed the confessional behavior of the laity, the following can be singled out: flight, disappearance of people; military service; labor or marriage migration to other settlements; stay in institutions of social protection of the population; training in different educational institutions; personal agreement with the priest; pilgrimage; belonging to other Christian denominations; imprisonment and exile to Siberia; «spiritual prohibition»; infancy; parental prohibition for children of confessional age; poor health, etc.

The determining factors that could correct the conduct of the sacred rite were: confession of certain categories of people at home; the presence of natural barriers that prevented people from visiting the church; a significant number of laity within one parish and a shortage of representatives of the Orthodox clergy; the impossibility of allocating the necessary confessional time for all the fasting persons; «pulsation» of households within a territorial Orthodox community; the presence of several churches within the settlement; non-performance by a priest of his official duties, etc. The clergy violated the lawful procedure for conducting the holy sacrament, confessed not in isolation, but by several parishioners. The Church recommended a number of changes to the regulations for conducting the church rite of confession.