Ksenia V. Vanicheva «The Case of Insulting a Sacred Object»: Disputes over Church Property in the Post-Reform Courts, 1870s–1880s

Abstract

The article analyses a court case concerning ownership of the Andronikov Icon of the Mother of God between the clergy of the Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg and a private owner, Collegiate Assessor M.A. Fedorov. The case is examined in the context of other high-profile trials involving members of the clergy in post-reform Russia, including the cases of Abbess Mitrofania and Hieromonk Nil (Nilus), which serve as a starting point for examining the position of the clergy within the new legal reality created by the Judicial Reform of 1864. Methodologically, the study follows the increasingly influential approach of the social history of law in contemporary historiography. The article draws on a broad range of archival sources from the collections of the Russian State Historical Archive and the Manuscript Department of the Russian State Library, including administrative records and numerous petitions submitted by the principal figure in the case, M.A. Fedorov. Particular attention is paid to the critical narrative constructed by Fedorov, a lawyer, in his writings concerning the legitimacy of the decisions of the reformed secular courts in matters relating to church property. The article demonstrates that the issues raised by Fedorov formed part of the broader public debate over the boundaries of the jurisdictions of secular and ecclesiastical courts, the admissibility of Orthodox clergy participating in public court proceedings in the post-reform period and, more broadly, the consequences of the Judicial Reform of 1864. The article concludes that the materials of the case under examination make it possible to take a critical view of the existing historiography of the Church during the Synodal period and to identify a number of new questions within the legal history of the clergy.

Keywords:

Orthodox clergy; Judicial Reform of 1864; court cases in the Russian Empire; church property litigation; Andronikov Icon of the Mother of God; Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg

For citation:

Ksenia V. Vanicheva. «The Case of Insulting a Sacred Object»: Disputes over Church Property in the Post-Reform Courts, 1870s–1880s. The Historical Reporter. 2026. Vol. 60. P. 88–109. DOI: 10.35549/HR.2026.2026.60.002

Received 13.11.2025. Revised 15.01.2026. Accepted 16.02.2026.

Ksenia V. Vanicheva

Postgraduate student at the European University in St. Petersburg. Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.

e-mail: kvanicheva@eu.spb.ru

ORCID: 0009-0000-0257-9202

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