On the issue of the canonical-legal status of the wives of the old Russian clergy (11th - 13th centuries)

One of the least studied social categories of antiquity are the wives of pastors, whose history hardly attracts the attention of researchers. The current state of affairs is explained by the state of the sources. On the life and canonical-legal status of wives of priests of the 11th -13th centuries we may know only after individual evidences of the time, as well as a few canonical and legal norms fixed in the ecclesiastical statutes and canonical codes. The article attempts to reconstruct the canonical-legal status of the wives of the ancient Russian clergy of pre-Mongolian times. Its reconstruction is difficult because of the small number of sources and their content. As a result, wives of the clergy often appear in an impartial and even negative form. Against this background, the story of the wife of the priest Vasily, an active participant in the events connected with the blindness of Terebovl Prince Vasilka, is seen as an exception. However, even this state of affairs speaks not so much of the wives of the ancient Russian clergy themselves, but of the interest shown to them by contemporaries...