Three Feasts of the Savior

In August the Orthodox Church celebrates three feast days, directly or indirectly connected with events in the earthly life of Christ the Savior (spasitel in Russian, often shortened to spas). They are: the origins of the honored wood of the life-giving Savior’s Cross (14th); the great feast of the Transfiguration of the Savior (19th); and the bringing from Edessa to Constantinople of the image of the Lord not made by human hand (29th). These feasts are known popularly as Spas the First (or Honey Spas, Spas on the Water), Spas the Second (or Apple Spas) and Spas the Third (Spas on Canvas).

At the end of summer and beginning of autumn, pagan Russian farmers and their Christian descendants had the same agricultural concerns and protective rites. Both aimed to banish evil from or protect from evil the harvest, livestock and land, and appease the good forces of nature and the cosmos. The end of summer meant the end of work in the fields —peasants got recompense from their spring and summer labors, and now they had to think about next year’s harvest and sow the winter cereals.

There was a saying in old Rus’: “ Spas the First is the first sowing.” In order to guarantee a future good harvest, peasants brought seeds to the church that day. Before the start of the sowing, priests would sprinkle the fields with holy water and bless the wells. The other name, Honey Spas, derives from the cutting and breaking of the combs. The first cut honeycombs were taken to the church to be blessed and also to the funerals of parents. On the same day, all over Rus’, an ancient pre-Christian ritual of the cleansing of water took place — everyone old and young, and after them livestock, bathed in rivers, lakes and ponds blessed by the priests. It was believed that this would protect the people and animals from evil spirits, curses and other ills.

On the Transfiguration feast day — Spas the Second — peasants brought harvested products to the church. They could only be eaten after they had been blessed (until then people were only allowed to eat cucumbers). Peasants would keep blessed seeds and ears of corn until the new harvest as a security for a good harvest the following year. They also regaled beggars and paupers with the first fruits of their labors (those who did not observe this ritual were condemned and all sorts of ills were foretold for them). This was also the time when people began to plough the land for winter sowing.

Spas the Third was called ‘Spas on Canvas’ not only because of the Christian origins of the holiday. Avgar, King of Edessa (now Urfa, in Eastern Turkey), was stricken with leprosy and begged Christ to heal him. Christ met the King’s messenger on the riverbank while bathing and gave him a towel — the messenger wiped himself with it and the image of Christ’s face was left on it. This towel then cured Avgar. This feast was also known as Spas on Canvas because in the old days peasants brought canvas and linen made from flax from the new harvest to the markets to sell. Spas the Third coincided with the end of the harvest and the winter sowing.

The end of the harvest cycle  brought some curious religious and ritual acts. One of them involved leaving a small clump of uncompressed ears in the middle strip of the field. Peasants would walk round the clump three times, gradually slitting the ears until there were just three or four left. Then they would slit these, bind them up in a red ribbon, put them on the ground, dig a hole nearby, put bread and salt in it and say: “We pray to God that next summer we will have  a bumper harvest!”

— Valentina Kolesnikova

Calendar Items in Brief

The Byzantine name for the eighth month replaced older Russian names like the north Russian zarev, from the word zarnitsa meaning lightning, and the southern serpen from the word serp (sickle) which was used to harvest cereals. These older words remain now only in early church calendars. August is especially beloved of agricultural laborers, being  the month when wheat, vegetables and fruits ripened and peasants received recompense for their toil. So August had plenty of pet names passed down orally — khlebosol (bread and salt), lenorast (flax-grower), gustoyed, gustyr (plenty to eat) etc. Photos from the Great Encyclopedia of Russia

A ugust is a star month for the intelligentsia in Russia — a whole host of writers, artists, critics and thinkers were born or died in it.

It’s particularly sad for one of the foremost families of Russian literature this century, the poets Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova. 75 years ago, on August 24, Gumilyov was shot by firing squad. 50 years ago, on the 14th, his widow was ‘executed’ civically and ideologically, when, thanks to a government resolution ‘On the Journals Zvezda and Leningrad’ every Soviet publishing house closed its doors to her. For over two decades, Akhmatova wrote without hope of publication, with virtually nothing to live on and not even a place to live. Perhaps she even sometimes envied her husband’s early exit, however violent and terrible it might have been. Much of her 70 years she spent lonely, isolated and homeless.

They were almost the same age — Akhmatova was born in 1889 and Gumilyov in 1886 — but she lived twice as long, dying in 1966. However, in their significance for Russia and for their contribution to its culture they were equals. Until recently it was believed that Gumilyov was executed for his part in a counter-revolutionary plot. But, according to a staffer at the Prosecutor General’s office in those years, he was completely innocent: in fact he was shot because he did not inform on fellow officers who tried to involve him in the so-called ‘Tagantsev Conspiracy’ near Petrograd (he categorically refused to join them). The exact date of his death is not known — it is counted among the 61 executions connected with the conspiracy.

Another famous couple in Russian literary circles in the early part of the century was thinker and critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky (born 130 years ago, on August 14) and poetess Zinaida Gippius. They emigrated in 1920 and Merezhkovsky was excluded from cultural, intellectual and spiritual developments in Russia for several decades. He spent 20 years in France and died in December 1941. All his works, written both in Russia and abroad, were published in the Soviet Union only at the end of the 1970s. His trilogy Christ and the Antichrist, as well as poems and critical essays, became best sellers, and plays like Paul I and Alexander I became major theatrical events. Several versions of his collected works have been published.

August 21 is the 125th anniversary of the birth of another great Russian writer and exile, Leonid Andreyev. He soared to fame after the publication of his first book in 1901 and was for a brief period the most popular and best paid writer in Russia. He was also a pioneer in color photography, creating prints of better quality than most produced for the next 50 years. Finding himself accidentally outside Russia during the October 1917 revolution (his dacha was in what was then Finland) he spent his last years in self-imposed exile. He died in 1919, taking his secret photography technique to the grave. His works, including short stories like A Tale of Seven Hanged Men and the drama Anathema, were doomed to obscurity for 30 years.

If Andreyev had many talents, Apollinary Vasnetsov, born August 6 1856, could be described as a jack of all trades. The brother of the famous itinerant artist Viktor Vasnetsov, Apollinary was a painter, graphic artist, archaeologist, historian and even astronomer. He is best remembered, though, as a landscape painter — he studied with both Repin and Polyenov — and for his historical scenes (see Veche in Russian Life June issue, The People’s Will).