Kola county of the Arkhangelsk eparchy in the first half of the XIX century: rural parishes and clerics

The article is the first to examine the composition of the Kola County of the Arkhangelsk Eparchy in the first half of the XIX century and identify the features of the local parish structure based on documents from the National Archive of the Republic of Karelia. It is shown that since the formation of the parish county, which occupied vast areas of Russian Lapland and the north of the White Sea Karelia, the number of its constituent parishes remained unchanged until the mid-1840s. In the middle of the XIX century, the eparchy leadership, realizing the need to develop the church parish system in the Kola North, began mapping the territory and constructing new churches. The spiritual authorities tried to build a more effective management system for rural parishes and clergy of the Kola County. The study revealed that very few rural clerics of the county were not affected by the newly-introduced Charter of Spiritual Consistories (1841) and a new staffing establishment for the churches of the Arkhangelsk Eparchy (1843). The paper introduces the statistical data on the size of parish communities in the Kola North into scientific circulation. The analysis of the educational level of the region's parish clergy leads to the conclusion that it was enough to graduate from a eparchial theological school to become a priest.