According to tradition, in Russia it was not customary to bury people who committed suicide, according to Orthodox tradition, and in common cemeteries. However, there were still exceptions.
Where were the suicides buried?
Suicide was considered a grave sin even in pagan times. The ancient Slavs believed that a person who committed suicide would not be able to find peace after death. He can even turn into a so-called "mortgaged dead" (as a kind of unclean spirits was called) and disturb the living.
In the Christian era, it was forbidden to bury suicides in consecrated ground because they angered God by refusing the gift of life. There was also a belief that if you bury such a dead man in a Christian cemetery, the other dead would “get angry” and trouble could come to the neighborhood - for example, a crop failure or an epidemic. If this happened, such dead were dug out of their graves to stop the evil.
At first, suicides were buried far from settlements - in the forest, on the edge of a field, in ravines, at road crossings … In later times, their bodies began to be put in communal burial grounds, which were called "squalid houses", "gods" or "scum". They were just huge pits and were located far from the Orthodox churchyards, usually outside the city or village, across the river.
In what cases could suicides be buried according to the Orthodox rite?
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According to church canons, suicides were: those who deliberately took their own lives; people killed in duels; criminals killed during the robbery; as well as people who died under unknown circumstances that looked like suicide (for example, drowned people). Sometimes this category included those who died from alcohol abuse. They were not only not buried in the common cemetery, but it was also forbidden to have funeral services, to order requiems and magpies for such dead.
However, the church made an exception, for example, for mentally ill people (in a later era, a conclusion of the attending physician was required on the state of mental health of the deceased); for those who managed to repent before death; for those who committed suicide through negligence - say, accidentally took poison, shot themselves while cleaning weapons, or accidentally fell out of the window; and finally, for those who sacrificed their own lives to save someone else's. They were allowed to be buried according to the Orthodox rite.
But first, the church authorities carried out a thorough investigation into the circumstances of the death, and for an Orthodox burial it was required to obtain the permission of the bishop.
What famous suicides were buried according to the Orthodox rite?
So, according to the church rite, Pushkin, mortally wounded in a duel, was buried (a duel was equated with suicide), since he brought repentance before his death.
Sergei Yesenin was also buried in accordance with Orthodox traditions at the Vagankovskoye cemetery, since in this case the suicide was not proven - it was only the official version, and there were certain arguments in favor of the poet's suicide being staged.
Irina Shlionskaya