1675: Boyarina Morozova, Old Believer

ExecutedToday.com ^ | November 2, 2019 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

Boyarina Feodosia Morozova starved to death in the early hours past midnight on the night of November 1-2, 1675.

This wealthy “Old Believer” noblewoman (English Wikipedia entry | Russian) is one of art history’s most famous religious dissidents thanks to Vasily Surikov‘s iconic painting of her being hauled away by the authorities, defiantly making the outlawed two-fingered sign of the cross.

This was big game hunted by Orthodoxy’s controversial reform movement: Boyarina Morozova’s brother-in-law was Boris Morozov, who during Tsar Alexei‘s minority had wielded the power behind the throne; her confessor was the protopope Avvakum Petrov, whose eventual martyrdom at the stake in 1682 rates an appearance on the Executed Today playing cards.

But her writ of privilege had long since run out, for she had been arrested and tortured back in 1671 together with her sister Evdokia Urusova and a fellow-travelling friend, Boyarina Maria Danilova. (This is the event captured by Surikov’s painting.) Perhaps her position saved her from outright execution — which all-grown-up Tsar Alexei reportedly contemplated — but not from being done to death by the state....

[freepertoo]

Fascinating.

[SES1066]

The painting mentioned ...;

[Bishop_Malachi]

The Russian culture has been subjected to the repeated invasions of steppe peoples (The Mongols stand out as the greatest), the tyranny of hapless tsars, and the godless fanaticism of the Communists. Their history (at least to me) seems to be a very depressing one.

[bravo whiskey]

I study and teach some Russian history classes. It was and still is depressing.