Eastern Orthodox Church and Beekeeping
Christianity came to ancient Rus' slightly before 1 AD, existing alongside and eventually replacing paganism, or "i͡azychestvo." The Russian Orthodox Church had massive cultural, political, and economic power.
Beekeeping comes into the picture when we consider church candles. In Eastern Orthodoxy, candles hold significant symbolic meaning and church visitors will light candles while saying prayers for specific individuals. Church candles are traditionally 100% pure beeswax, as beeswax candles have symbolic connotations of purity in addition to burning cleanly. A portion of the Church's budget came from sales of candles, but the church had to compete with swindlers who would add materials such as paraffin to create cheaper candles, and pretend to be monks as they made sales door-to-door. The Russian government issued several decrees to combat this issue, but they never seemed to be quite effective enough. A Russian-language article on this topic is available online from S. A. Ikonnikov. However, numbers and dates have been omitted from the downloadable document.
After the formation of the Soviet Union, the church was actively suppressed by the government, yet many beekeeping publications discuss a national shortage of beeswax throughout this time period. It might be interesting to look at the ways the Eastern Orthodox Church sourced its beeswax for candle production, whether these channels persisted after Soviet rule, and whether other beekeeping products were used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in less prominent ways.
Cornell Libraries has a number of resources on the Eastern Orthodox Church that might be interesting to peruse. You may also want to explore this extensive blog dedicated to interpreting icon art, Russian Icons.
- Kratkīĭ svi︠a︡shchennyĭ slovarʹ (Brief church dictionary) byCall Number: Microfiche 804 RH 19868Publication Date: 1835This very old book likely contains much of the vocabulary necessary to pursue archival documents of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
- Grodnenskīĭ pravoslavno-t︠s︡erkovnyĭ kalendarʹ ili sovremennoe sostoi︠a︡nīe pravoslavnoĭ t︠s︡erkvi v Grodnenskoĭ gubernīi byCall Number: Microfiche 804 RH18437Publication Date: 1893This is an archival inventory of a church in the Grodno region of Belarus, and can provide information on whether this church kept bees and a general overview of the church budget.
- A course of six lectures on the chemical history of a candle byCall Number: History of Science QD39 .F21Publication Date: n.d.This lecture series is available in English and in Russian; the lecture was delivered to a British audience.
- Church Candle Operations and the Founding of Church Candle Factories in the Eparchies in the Central Black Earth RegionIn Russian; dates and numbers are omitted from text.