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The Wandering Orthodox Nuns: Religion and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Central Balkans
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2021
Abstract
This article discusses a specific type of religious travel—not pious pilgrimage to the Holy Lands—but more mundane trips performed by Eastern Orthodox sisters to beg for donations within and between three multi-confessional empires. More specifically, it focuses on how nuns’ spatial movements put them on the bigger imperial and transnational maps of church, state, and society and contributed to negotiating space for gender. By combining mobility and gender as categories of analysis, I position the sisters’ acts within three broad themes: travel, women's education, and social networks. I suggest that nuns’ involvement in local communities and the establishment of schools for girls provides evidence for worldly as well as pious concerns. By encompassing rich social interactions, the sisters’ story presents gender imbalances in more palpable form and embodies larger experiences of nineteenth-century women who strove to achieve self-development and to assert social visibility.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Footnotes
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and David Cooper for their insightful comments and suggestions.
References
1 The examples include but are not limited to Paisius of Hilendar, Jovan Rajić, Dositej Obradović, Gheorghe Sincai. For a critique, see Rogel, Carole, “The Wandering Monk and the Balkan National Awakening,” in Haddad, William and Ochsenwald, William, eds., Nationalism in a Non-National State. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (Columbus, 1977), 82–83Google Scholar.
2 In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, convents are often called monasteries. I will use both terms interchangeably. The Orthodox terms for nun are: kalogria, kalugerka, kaluđerica, inokinia, and monakhinia. For convenience, I will also use nun and sister interchangeably.
3 Bayly, Christopher A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; and Osterhammel, Jurgen, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Camiller, Patrick (Princeton, 2014)Google Scholar.
4 Scott, Joan Wallach, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Scott, Joan Wallach, ed., Feminism and History (Oxford, 1996), 169Google Scholar; and Tim Cresswell, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (New York, 2006), 4.
5 Gérard Chastagnaret and Olivier Raveux, “Espace et stratégies industrielles aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles: Exploiter le laboratoire méditerranéen,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 48, no. 2/3 (2001): 18–20.
6 On the issue of “relative synchronicity of eastern and western Europe within a longue durée framework,” see Maria Todorova, “The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism,” Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 147; and Krassimira Daskalova and Susan Zimmermann, “Women’s and Gender History,” in Irina Livezeanu and Arpad von Klimo, eds., The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700 (London, 2017), 278–322.
7 Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, “Introduction,” in Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, eds., Religious Internationals in the Modern World. Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750 (New York, 2012), 15–17.
8 There is a voluminous literature on Eastern Orthodox Christianity. See, for example, Michael Angold, ed., The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 5, Eastern Christianity (Cambridge, Eng., 2006); Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London, 1997); Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy: Studies in Culture and Political Thought of South-East Europe (Aldershot, Eng., 1994); Lucian Leustean, ed., Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe (New York, 2014). On the Ecumenical Patriarchate, see Steven Runciman, The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (Cambridge, Eng., 1968); and Dimitris Stamatopoulos, Metarrythmisi kai ekkosmikevsi: Pros mia anasynthesi tis istorias tou Oikoumenikou Patriarcheiou ton 190 aiona (Athens, 2003). On separate countries, see Theodore Papadopoulos, Studies and Documents Relating to the History of the Greek Church and People under Turkish Domination, 2nd ed. (Aldershot, Eng., 1990); Paul Pavlovich, The History of the Serbian Orthodox Church (Toronto, 1989); and Olga Todorova, Pravoslavnata tsŭrkva i bŭlgarite, XV-XVIII vek (Sofia, 1997).
9 I had difficulties in locating research on Orthodox nuns in the nineteenth -century Balkans. General histories barely mentioned them. As far as there are studies, the majority of them are focused on contemporary expressions of religiosity. See, for example, Ines Angeli Murzaku, ed., Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics (London, 2016). On Greece and Cyprus, see Marina Iossifides, “Sisters in Christ: Metaphors of Kinship Among Greek Nuns,” in Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis, eds., Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece (Princeton, 1991), 135–55; Kostis Kokkinoftas, “O gynaikeios monachismos stin Kypro,” Politistiki Kypros. Miniaio periodiko kypriakou politismou 2 (February 1997): 52–60. On Serbia, see Milojko Veselinović, “Srpske kaluđerice,” reprint Glasa srpske kraljevske akademije LXXX (1909), 155–235; Milica Bakić-Hayden, “Women Monastics in Orthodox Christianity: The Case of the Serbian Orthodox Church,” NCEEER, at www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2003_816_20_BakicHayden.pdf (accessed January 14, 2020); Dragana Zaharijevski and Danijela Gavrilović, “Female Monasticism in the SOC—the Example of the Lipovac Monastery,” Facta Universitatis – Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology and History 15, no. 3 (2016): 119–26; on the post-WWI period see Radmila Radić, “Monasticism in Serbia in the Modern Period: Development, Influence, Importance,” in Ines Angeli Murzaku ed., Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics (London, 2016), 201–10. On Bulgaria, see Kostadinka Paskaleva, “Kŭm istoriata na zhenskoto monashestvo v Bŭlgaria,” in Sbornik statii i studii 1967–2011 (Sofia, 2011): 327–56; Aksinia Dzhurova et al., eds., Devicheskiat manastir “Pokrov Presviatiia Bogoroditsi” v Samokov (Sofia, 2002); Valentina Drumeva, Monashestvoto po bŭlgarskite zemi (Kratko izsledvane vŭz osnova na istoricheski i arkheologicheski prouchvania) (Holy Monastery of Zografos, Mt. Athos, 2006); Valentina Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir “Sv.Vŭvedenie Bogorodichno” i metosite v Kalofer (Sofia, 1998); Antoaneta Kirilova, “Devicheskiat manastir ‘Vŭvedenie Bogorodichno’ v Kazanŭk prez Vŭzrazhdaneto (Kŭm edna ideia za otkrivane na uchilishte v manastira),” Minalo: Quarterly of History 19, no. 4 (2012): 28–42; and Biliana Karadakova, “Devicheskite manastiri v bŭlgarskite zemi XVIII—nachaloto na XIX vek” (PhD diss., Iugozapaden Universitet Blagoevgrad, 2015). On North Macedonia, see Ruzica Cacanoska, “Female Monasticism in the Border Line (Monastery of Saint Archangel Michael—Berovo),” Facta Universitatis – Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology and History 15, no. 3 (2016): 103–18.
10 In Greece, in 1833, there were around 563 monasteries and metochia: 545 male and eighteen female, but in 1834 the Regency dissolved 412 of them. The presence of at least thirty nuns was required for a convent to exist, and so only four survived in 1858; they increased to ten by 1907. Similarly, in 1909, Bulgaria had twelve convents with 346 nuns compared to seventy-eight monasteries with 184 monks. Dimitris Stamatopoulos, “The Orthodox Church of Greece,” in Lucian Leustean ed., Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe (New York, 2014), 41–42, 217; Georgios Metallinos, “O Elladikos monachismos ton 190 aiona,” at www.oodegr.com/oode/istoria/ekklisia/ellad_monax_19_ai_1.htm (accessed July 18, 2020); and Jordan Kolev, “The Bulgarian Exarchate as a National Institution and the Position of the Clergy (1878–1912),” Etudes Balkaniques, no. 2 (1991): 45.
11 O.V. Kirichenko, Zhenskoe pravoslavnoe podvizhnichestvo v Rossii: XIX—seredina XX veka (Moscow, 2010); Brenda Meehan-Waters, “Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) and the Reform of the Russian Women’s Monastic Communities,” The Russian Review 50, no. 3 (July 1991): 310–23; and Adele Lindenmeyr, “Public Life, Private Virtues: Women in Russian Charity, 1762–1914,” Signs 18, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 562–91.
12 This section is based mostly on Galatariotou’s research. Catia Galatariotou, “Byzantine Women’s Monastic Communities: the Evidence of the ‘Typika’,” Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 38 (1988): 263–90; Catia Galatariotou “Byzantine Ktetorika Typika: A Comparative Study,” Revue des etudes byzantines 45 (1987): 77–138. See also Angeliki Laiou, “Observation on the Life and Ideology of Byzantine Women,” Byzantinische Forschungen 9 (1985): 59–102; and Alexander Riehle, “Authorship and Gender (and) Identity: Women’s Writing in the Middle Byzantine Period,” in Aglae Pizzone, ed., The Author in Middle Byzantine Literature: Modes, Functions, and Identities (Berlin, 2014), 245–62.
13 For example, the typikon of the Samokov convent (1871) stated that it was founded as idiorrhythmic monastery around 1771. Aksinia Dzhurova, “Zastŭpnichestvoto na svetiite,” in Devicheskiat manastir “Pokrov Presviatiia Bogoroditsi” v Samokov, 19.
14 Sashka Georgieva, “Model i deistvitelnost v asketichnia zhivot na zhenite v srednovekovna Bŭlgaria,” Ricerche slavistiche 41 (1994): 105–20; Veselinović, “Srpske kaluđerice,” 169–72; and K. Paskaleva, “Kŭm istoriata,” 328–32.
15 Dimitrije Ruvarac, ed., Opis srpskih fru š kogorskih manastira 1753 god. (Sremski Karlovci, 1903), 97–104; Veselinović, “Srpske kaluđerice,” 208–20; In Cyprus, too, women’s monasteries disappeared after the Ottoman invasion and nuns were scattered. Kokkinoftas, “O gynaikeios monachismos,” 54–55.
16 Eleni Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, “To fainomeno tis ziteias kata ti metabyzantini periodo,” Ionios Logos. Tmima istorias—Ionio panepistimio A’ (2007): 273–74.
17 For example, the Russian traveler M. Karlova (1868) described such a situation in the village of Rila wherein around 60 nuns lived in a few homes around the church. M. Karlova, “Turetskaia provintsiia i eia sel΄skaia i gorodskaia zhizn΄. Puteshestvie po Makedonii i Albanii,” Vestnik Evropy 4, 5 (1870): 155; O. Todorova, Pravoslavnata ts ŭ rkva, 141; and Veselinović, “Srpske kaluđerice,” 221–28.
18 There is a substantial literature on individual monasteries and monastic life. More recently, there is an increased interest in the economics of monastic life. See, for example, Elias Kolovos, ed., Monastiria, oikonomia kai politiki. Apo tous mesaionikous stous neoterous chronous (Hrakleio, 2011).
19 Ivan Radev, Taksidiotstvo i taksidioti po bŭlgarskite zemi prez XVIII–XIX vek (Sofia, 2008): 5–42; Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, “To fainomeno tis ziteias,” 247–93.
20 Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, “To fainomeno tis ziteias,” 261, 267.
21 O. Todorova, Pravoslavnata tsŭrkva, 132–33; Elizabeth Zachariadou, “Mount Athos and the Ottomans c.1350–1550,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 5 (Cambridge, Eng. 2006): 166–68.
22 Rogel, “The Wandering Monk,” 84–89.
23 Bŭlgarski istoricheski arkhiv pri Natsionalna biblioteka “Sv. sv. Kiril i Metodii” (hereafter BIA-NBKM), IIA 5332, 1–3.
24 Sophia Senyk, “Women’s Monasteries in Ukraine and Belorussia to the Period of Suppressions,” Orientalia Christiana Analecta 222 (1983): 78–79.
25 Simon Dixon, “Nationalism versus Internationalism: Russian Orthodoxy in Nineteenth-Century Palestine,” in Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, eds., Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities since 1750 (New York, 2012), 152. While the number of Russian monks rose from 5,122 to 7,189 between 1840 and 1890, female numbers jumped from 2,287 to 7,306 for the same period. Ivan Preobrazhenskii, ed., Otechestvennaia tserkov΄ po statisticheskim dannym s 1840–41 po 1890–91 gg. (St. Petersburg, 1897), 15.
26 Meehan-Waters, “Metropolitan Filaret,” 311.
27 Kirichenko, Zhenskoe pravoslavnoe podvizhnichestvo, 13–17, 88–96; Meehan-Waters, “Metropolitan Filaret,” 322.
28 Bayly, The Birth, 338–43.
29 Kanitz corroborates that “claustration” was not as severe as among Catholics. Felix Kanitz, La Bulgarie Danubienne et le Balkan. Études de voyage (1860–1880) (Paris, 1882), 168.
30 Metoch (Bulgarian) derives from the Greek metochion (metochia in plural); it is a term with multiple meanings. It could be a small monastery or landholding and other property that belongs to a bigger and distant monastery. The term often designates small convents.
31 Drumeva, Monashestvoto, 330.
32 Nikolai Zhechev, “Kiev i bŭlgarskoto devichesko obrazovanie prez Vŭzrazhdaneto,” Istoricheski pregled 3 (1992): 58–59; Senyk, “Women’s Monasteries,” 138, 185.
33 Nikola Nachov, Kalofer v minaloto (Sofia, 1990), 171.
34 Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 23–24.
35 Khristo Gandev, “Predania za dva bŭlgarski manastira,” Izvestia na istoricheskoto druzhestvo XIX–XX (1944), 171–75.
36 Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 24–35.
37 Nachov, Kalofer, 178.
38 Kirilova, “Devicheskiat manastir,” 28.
39 BIA-NBKM, f. 6, IA 6366. Building churches was generally prohibited but often the repair of old ones was possible. Yet there was a long and complex procedure for getting a permit, including proof of its “oldness”; other limitations included the height of the building and the bell towers. The steps required three types of permits: one by the Sultan for allowing an inspection in situ, another by the local kadi (Muslim judge) for details about the building, and a third by the imperial council for carrying out the repair. Rossitsa Gradeva, “From the Bottom Up and Back Again until Who Knows When: Church Restoration Procedures in the Ottoman Empire, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries (Preliminary Notes),” in Antonis Anastasopoulos, ed., Political Initiatives ‘From the Bottom Up’ in the Ottoman Empire: Halcyon Days in Crete VII (Rethymno, 2012), 149–51, 160–161.
40 Petŭr Tsonchev, Iz obshtestvenoto i kulturno minalo na Gabrovo. Istoricheski prinos (Veliko Tŭrnovo, 1996), 256–57.
41 Dŭrzhaven Arkhiv Gabrovo (hereafter DA-Gabrovo), 669k, op. 1, a.e. 1, 29.
42 V. M. Khevrolina, “Doneseniia rossiiskikh konsulov v Bosnii i Gertsegovine kak istochnik po istorii ikh diplomaticheskoi deiatel΄nosti (1856–1874),” in V. M. Khevrolina, I. S. Rybanchok, G. A. Kuznetsova, eds., Vneshniaia politika Rossii. Istochniki i istoriografiia. Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1991), 45, 57; Holly Case, “The Quiet Revolution: Consuls and the International System in 19th Century,” in Timothy Snyder and Katherine Younger, eds., Balkans as Europe, 1821–1914 (Rochester, 2018), 111–18.
43 S.A. Nikitin, Slavianskie komitety v Rossii v 1858–1876 godakh (Moscow, 1960), 27; Maria Todorova, Anglia, Russia i Tanzimatŭt (Sofia, 1980), 126–43.
44 Evguenia Davidova, Balkan Transitions to Modernity and Nation-States Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s–1890s) (Leiden, 2013), 45–77.
45 It is difficult to discern what means of transportation were used by the itinerant sisters. The extant sources provide sparse information, but indirectly, it is known that merchants, hajjis (pilgrims), and female students from these locations traveled by wagons, carriages, and oxcarts. Usually, a caravan was organized to Marmara or Black Sea ports, and from there passengers were transported by sailboats to Constantinople. There was a regular maritime connection between Constantinople and Odessa. In Russia, most nuns traveled by the commonly used troika. Tsonchev, Iz obshtestvenoto i kulturno minalo, 486–92; Rada Kirkovich, Spomeni (Sofia, 1927), 23–26; Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 99.
46 Bayly, The Birth, 330.
47 Nachov, Kalofer, 170–75.
48 There are multiple notes indicating a range of transactions made by the nuns: from selling a garden to buying an orchard to exchanging dispersed fields. The sisters also bought half a watermill and half a fulling-mill. DA-Gabrovo, f. 186k, op. 1, a.e. 25, 1–24.
49 For example, Melania bequeathed 300 guruş, Tekla 2,000 guruş, Theokista bestowed fields valued at 2,000 and 3,500 guruş in cash. Dŭrzhaven Arkhiv Tŭrnovo, f. 726k, op. 1, a.e. 27, 9–11.
50 Guruş/kuruş a silver coin, was a standard unit of account until 1844; it was called piastre in European sources.
51 Davidova, Balkan Transitions, 120.
52 Ivan Patev, “Devicheskata obitel Pokrov Presviatiia Bogoroditsi v Samokov (dokumenti i predania),” in Devicheskiat manastir “Pokrov Presviatiia Bogoroditsi” v Samokov, 65.
53 G. Muir Mackenzie and A.P. Irby, Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey-in-Europe, vol. 1 (London, 1877), 147.
54 BIA-NBKM, IIA 1356/2; IIA 5357. All translations are mine, unless otherwise mentioned.
55 V.I. Grigorovich, Doneseniia V.I. Grigorovicha ob΄ego puteshestviia po slavianskim zemliam (Kazan΄, 1915), 182.
56 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 231, 3.
57 Davidova, Balkan Transitions, 120; Svetla Ianeva, “Female Actors, Producers and Money Makers in Ottoman Public Space: The Case of the Late Ottoman Balkans,” in Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, eds., Ottoman Women in Public Space (Leiden, 2016), 58; and Andreas Lyberatos, “State and Economy in Late Ottoman Thrace: Mihalaki Gümğüşgerdan and the ‘Woollens of the State,’” Turcica 46 (2015), 205–36.
58 Tsentralen dŭrzhaven arkhiv, f. 161k, op. 3, a.e. 1037, 1, 6, 12.
59 Kirkovich, Spomeni, 2–4; Vasilis Kremmydas, Emporoi kai emporika diktya sta chronia tou eikosiena (1820–1835). Kikladites emporoi kai ploiktes (Athens, 1996), 93.
60 Between 1780s and 1850s, prices increased by between twelve to fifteen times. Şevket Pamuk, “Prices in the Ottoman Empire, 1469–1914,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 3 (August 2004): 456.
61 BIA-NBKM, IIB 9910, 29.
62 The Table includes only specific mentions of trips; various sources note many other traveling nuns but without names and/or years. BIA-NBKM, f. 6, IA 6160; IA 6262; IA 6289; BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 5, a.e 65, a.e. 231, a.e. 251, a.e. 321; BIA-NBKM, IIA 1356/2; DA-Gabrovo, f. 717k, op. 3, a.e. 23; f. 669k, op. 1, a.e. 10; Nil΄ Popov, Ocherki religioznoi i natsional΄noi blagotvoritel΄nosti na Vostoke i sredi slavian, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1871), 97; Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 37–38, 72–95; Nachov, Kalofer, 170–78; Đoko Slijepčević, Mihailo, archiepiskop Beogradski i mitropolit Srbije (Munich, 1980), 427–28; Veselinović, “Srpske kaluđerice,” 231–32.
63 BIA-NBKM, f. 6, IA 6262.
64 BIA-NBKM, f. 6, IA 6289.
65 BIA-NBKM, f. 6, IA 289.
66 Popov, Ocherki religioznoi i natsional΄noi blagotvoritel΄nosti, 97.
67 This model was practiced by early 18th-century nuns from Athens. They travelled either in pairs or a single sister was accompanied by a male cleric. While in the Greek case male trustees monitored the alms, the Bulgarian nuns controlled their funds. Angelomatis-Tsougarakis, “To fainomeno tis ziteias,” 274.
68 Unfortunately, such hints at developing some form of spiritual mentorship or friendship are rare. DA-Gabrovo, f. 717k, op. 3, a.e. 23.
69 DA-Gabrovo, f. 669k, op. 1, a.e. 10.
70 Nachov, Kalofer, 176.
71 See, for example, BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 5, 81.
72 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 321, 1–2.
73 Rogel, “The Wandering Monk,” 88.
74 Adele Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton, 1996), 10.
75 Marie-Janine Calic, The Great Cauldron: A History of Southeastern Europe, trans. Elizabeth Janik (Cambridge, Mass., 2019), 283.
76 For instance, in 1868–1870, Ekaterina sent through him 200 chervonets and church objects, collected in Serbia and Austria-Hungary. BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 5, 194–195.
77 Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 37–39.
78 Popov, Ocherki, 86; Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Vsepoddanneishii otchet ober-prokurora Sviateishego sinoda po vedomstvu pravoslavnogo ispovedania. . .za 1885 g. (St. Petersburg, 1886), 286; Nikitin, Slavianskie komitety, 111; Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Domestic Frontiers: Gender, Reform, and American Interventions in the Ottoman Balkans and the Near East (Amherst, 2013), 67–68. The Ottoman state also considered that the “missionary problem” posed considerable challenges. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London, 1998), 112.
79 Popov, Ocherki, 89–98; Nikitin, Slavianskie komitety, 155.
80 Popov, Ocherki, 97.
81 Kirichenko, Zhenskoe pravoslavnoe podvizhnichestvo, 235–37, 244–48.
82 Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 72–95.
83 Rogel, “The Wandering Monk,” 85.
84 Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 95.
85 Kirilova, “Devicheskiat manastir,” 28; and Kanitz, La Bulgarie Danubienne, 178.
86 During the Cold War, there was a multitude of studies about the Pan-Slavism, the Eastern Question, and Russian policy in the Ottoman Balkans. For still relevant surveys see Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements 1806–1914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1991); M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774–1923: A Study in International Relations (London, 1965); and Michael Boro Petrovich, The Emergence of Russian Panslavism, 1856–1870 (New York, 1956). For a Russian perspective, see Khevrolina, Rybanchok, Kuznetsova, Vneshniaia politika Rossii. With reference to religious policy, see Eileen Kane, Russian Hajj: Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Ithaca, 2015); for a comparison between the Russian and Eastern Orthodox hajj, see Valentina Izmirlieva, “Christian Hajjis—the Other Orthodox Pilgrims to Jerusalem,” Slavic Review 73, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 322–46.
87 Drumeva, Devicheskiat manastir, 101.
88 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 232, 2, 4; IIA 1356/2.
89 Barbara Engel, Women in Russia, 1700–2000 (Cambridge, Eng., 2004), 117; Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice, 125.
90 Virginia Paskaleva, B ŭ lgarkata prez V ŭzrazhdaneto (Sofia, 1984), 21, 42–43.
91 BIA-NBKM, IIA 5332, 1–3.
92 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 5, 196.
93 Mackenzie and Irby, Travels, vol. 2, 41–57.
94 Veselinović, “Srpske kaluđerice,” 227–33; Slijepčević, Mihailo, archiepiskop Beogradski, 420, 427–28.
95 Nachov, Kalofer, 173–74.
96 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 251, 3–5.
97 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 5, 224; a.e. 251, 1.
98 Kirilova, “Devicheskiat manastir,” 28–33.
99 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 55, 2–3.
100 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 65, 4.
101 BIA-NBKM, f. 22, a.e. 231, 1, 3.
102 Veselinović, “Srpske kaluđerice,” 231–32.
103 Khristo Khristov, B ŭlgarskite obshtini prez Vŭzrazhdaneto (Sofia, 1973), 136–37, 153.
104 Indeed, this was a wide-spread phenomenon. See Maria Bucur, “To Have and to Hold: Gender Regimes and Property Rights in the Romanian Principalities Before World War I,” European History Quarterly 48, no. 4 (October 2018): 601–28.
105 BIA-NBKM, f. 6, IA 8996, 74–75; IA 8999, 719–721.
106 Gisela Bock, Women in European History, trans. Allison Brown (Oxford, 2002), 116.
107 Antonio d’Alessandri, “Orthodox monasticism and the development of the modern Romanian state: from Dora d’Istria’s criticism (1855) to cyclical reevaluation of monastic spirituality in contemporary Romania,” in Monasticism in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics, 173–75.
108 Dora d’Istria, La vie monastique dans l’Église orientale (Paris, 1855), I–IV.
109 Evguenia Davidova, “Gender and Culture in the Turkish Province: The Observations of a Russian Woman Traveler (1868),” Aspasia. The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 6, no. 1 (March 2012): 82.
110 Similarly, at the turn of the nineteenth century, several Serbian writers wrote novels criticizing illiterate monks who could not even read the Scriptures. Radić, “Monasticism,” 201.
111 Kirilova, “Devicheskiat manastir,” 29, 35–36.
112 Bakić-Hayden, “Women Monastics,” iii.
113 Cited in Todor Ikonomov, Memoari (Sofia, 1973), 73–77. Emphasis added by author.
114 Calic, The Great Cauldron, 287.