The Western "Witch Hunt" did not spread to Orthodox Russia. Nevertheless, witches were persecuted here.
Already in the "Tale of Bygone Years" we meet lines worthy of inclusion in the "Hammer of the Witches": "Most of all, through wives, demonic sorceries happen, for from time immemorial the demon has deceived a woman, she is a man, therefore today women sorcery a lot, and poison, and other demonic wiles”(1071).
The church charter of Vladimir Svyatoslavovich (the final version was formed at the beginning of the 12th century) names among the crimes subject to the church court: not only "heretical", but also "witchcraft", and "knots [conspiratorial knots for driving away diseases, slander]."
The charter was in effect until the 17th century inclusive - in the formal reply of Archbishop Cyprian of Tobolsk to the tsarist voivods (1623) it is indicated, with reference to the decrees of the tsar and the patriarch, "witchcraft … that's all, gentlemen, our spiritual affairs" (History of Siberia. Primary sources. IV issue. - Novosibirsk, 1994. - S. 255-256).
The charter of the church courts of Yaroslav (the church law code, formed in the 13-14th centuries) provided for a mild punishment: “If the wife is a sorceress, a forge, or a sorcerer, or a sorceress, the husband, having caught. will punish her, but not divorce. In this case, the church left the punishment of the witch to her husband, and the severity of the punishment depended on the attitude of the latter to his wife.
The epic about Dobryna Nikitich tells how he “taught” his wife, a sorceress, “heretic” and “atheist” Marina Ignatievna: “I cut off her head and with a tongue completely / And this language is not needed, / He knew heretical things” such punishment, of course, was not common.
There was a practice of burning sorcerers. Actually, the ritual burning of the Magi existed even among the pagans. Bishop Serapion of Suzdal preached in the 70s. 13th century:
“You still adhere to the pagan custom of sorcery, you believe and burn innocent people. In what books, in what scriptures have you heard that there are famines on earth from sorcery? If you believe this, then why are you burning the Magi? Do you beg, honor them, bring gifts to them, so that they do not cause a pestilence, let it rain, bring warmth, ordered the earth to be fruitful?
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Sorcerers and sorceresses act with demonic power over those who fear them, and who hold firm faith to God, they have no power over those. I grieve for your madness, I beg you, step back from the deeds of the pagans. The sequel clearly demonstrated the true value of the bishop's mercy. So: “I beg you, step back from the deeds of the pagans.
If you want to cleanse the city of wicked people, I rejoice. Cleanse, as David, the prophet and king, destroyed in the city of Jerusalem all those who did lawlessness: some by death, others by exile, others by dungeons, always made the city of the Lord worthy, free from sins”(IV Teaching of the Monk Serapion // Gromov M., Milkov V. Ideological currents of ancient Russian thought. - SPb., 2001. - S. 546-547).
Double morality, usual for the Middle Ages - Serapion mercifully opposes the murders of sorcerers for pagan reasons, but immediately demands to execute them as enemies of Christianity.
Not surprisingly, with the establishment of Christianity, the burning did not stop. In 1411, twelve sorcerers were burned to death in Pskov on suspicion of having sent a plague to the city. In 1444 the Mozhaisky prince ordered to burn the noblewoman Marya Mamonova “for magic”. In 1575 Grozny burned 15 witches in Novgorod. Several sorcerers were burned by the order of his son Fyodor Ioannovich.
In 1638, the case of the Zamoskvoretsk witches was investigated. One tsarist gold embroiderer in the heat of a quarrel made a libel on her friend, they say, the sorceress poured ashes on the sovereign's trail.
Under severe torture, witnesses to witchcraft began to testify. The tsarist detectives got to a certain Nastasya, the wife of the Lithuanian Yanko Pavlov. It is clear that the witch was accused of being a foreign spy. They began to find out whether she had received from the Polish and Lithuanian king "the order of the sovereign and empress to spoil". On the rack, Nastasya confessed that "she ordered to pour it not for a dashing business, but in order for the sovereign or empress queen to pass that ashes, and whose petition will be in those days, and that will be done."
Unfortunately for the sorcerers, in 1639 a disaster struck in the royal family. After an illness, the five-year-old Tsarevich Ivan Mikhailovich died, followed by the newborn heir Vasily Mikhailovich. The sovereign ordered to torture witches by a personal decree. Nastasya died during the investigation, the same fate was prepared for her friend, the blind Ulyana. The rest were sent into exile.
In the 17th century, witchcraft was a state crime in Russia. According to historians, the first private legalization of the fight against sorcery took place under Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich. In the "Charter on the establishment of the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy", attributed to 1682-1685, it was written:
“To this, from our sovereign, an established school, be common, and in it all blessed sciences be from the church. And from the Church of forbidden sciences, especially natural magic. And do not teach such other teachers and do not have such teachers. If there are such teachers where they find themselves and they and their students are even sorcerers without any mercy, let them be burned."
The death of Fyodor Alekseevich himself was attributed by popular rumor to sorcerers from the German settlement. The rebellious archers broke into the Kremlin. They were looking for a doctor Daniel van Gaden. The protection of Princess Sophia did not help the foreign doctor. The doctor was recognized as a sorcerer, as archers found a many-legged sea animal in his house. The alcoholized octopus became the last proof of the "regicide's" guilt. The doctor was brutally tortured and chopped to pieces.
Everything that happened in these years is very reminiscent of the political repression of the Stalinist years. All the same slander, false accusations. Many in those days settled scores with their enemies. Testimonies were obtained under torture and no acquaintances were found.
Loud processes shook entire areas. The tsar's entourage were not spared either, for the accusation alone was enough to start the investigation machine, grinding everyone who came across. The kings were terribly afraid of witchcraft spells and easily parted with those who were suspected of them.
In the troubled time of confrontation between Sophia and Peter, sorcerers took an active part. The head of the streltsy order, the okolnichy Fyodor Shaklovity, sent the warlock to Preobrazhenskoye to exterminate Peter. The sorcerer Vasily Ikonnik demanded five thousand rubles from Sophia for bringing mortal damage to the sovereign.
But not only Sofya's accomplices were so cunning. The bed-bed of Tsar Peter, who later became chancellor, Gavrila Golovkin, in great secrecy, brought Ibragim Dolotkozin and the Tatar Kodorolei to the king of the Tatar murza.
The sorcerers were spellbound from books and predicted Peter's victory in the political struggle.
A ruble of money, a quarter of rye flour, half an octopus of wheat flour, an octopus of peas, half an octopus of cereals, half a stew of meat and half a bucket of wine - so much the services of the sorcerer Dorofey Prokofiev were appreciated by the steward Andrey Bezobrazov. He instructed the sorcerer to enchant Tsar Peter I, so that he would not send him, the old, voivode to the Terek.
The sorcerer fulfilled the request. Cast a spell on the wind. However, they gave him away. The centurion was executed in Red Square, and on the same day the sorcerer Prokofiev and his assistants burned down in a log house on the same day, "for their theft and their state health for an evil magic and God-canceled intent."
The rulers do not forgive the attempts of supernatural power to influence their decisions. In the "Articles of the Military", published in 1716 under Peter I, various types of witchcraft are prohibited under pain of severe punishment. There, for the first time, a clause was introduced about punishing not only sorcerers, but also their customers: "Whoever bribes the sorcerer, or persuades him, so that he does harm to someone else, he will be punished just like the sorcerer himself."
The autocrat persecuted the sorcerers, but there is an assumption that he himself, through his advisor Bruce, together with his associates, was engaged in magic, alchemy and astrology. Legends? Was it? It will become of our kings.
Officially, the persecution of witchcraft in Russia ceased in the 19th century. The authorities declared sorcery to be ignorance. But little has changed. In the villages, from time to time, witches were burned, and in noble circles they used newfangled occult rituals. Attempts to magically influence the rulers, apparently, never stopped.
