DVOEVERIE

"Dvoeverie"—"double-belief" or "dual faith"—is a highly influential concept in Russian studies, which began to be questioned in the 1990s. Since the 1860s, historians have used it to describe the conscious or unconscious preservation of pagan beliefs and/or rituals by Christian communities (generally as a syncretic faith containing Christian and pagan elements; a form of peasant/female resistance to elite/patriarchal Christianity; or two independent belief-systems held concurrently). This concept has colored academic perception of Russian medieval (and often modern) spirituality, leading to a preoccupation with identifying latent paganism in Russian culture. It has often been considered a specifically Russian phenomenon, with the medieval origins of the term cited as evidence.

This definition of dvoeverie is supported in part by one text, the eleventh-century Sermon of the Christlover, but its notable absence in other anti-pagan polemics (including those regularly cited as evidence of double-belief), plus many uses of the word in different contexts, lead one to conclude that the term was not originally understood in this way. Dvoeverie probably originated as a calque from Greek, via the translated Nomocanon. While at least six Greek constructions are translated as dvoeverie or a lexical derivative thereof, the common thread is that of being "in two minds"; being unable to decide or agree, or being unable to perceive the true nature of something. In the majority of these cases, there is no question of there being two faiths in which the practitioner believes simultaneously or even alternately, and sometimes no question of religious faith at all.

In other pre-Petrine texts, dvoeverie means "duplicitous" or "hypocritical," or relates to an inability or unwillingness to identify solely with the one true and Orthodox faith. Lutherans and those fraternizing with Roman Catholics, rather than semiconverted heathens, were the target of this pejorative epithet.

See also: orthodoxy; paganism

bibliography

Levin, Eve. (1993) "Dvoeverie and Popular Religion." In Seeking God: The Recovery of Religious Identity in Orthodox Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia ed. S. K. Batalden. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

Rock, Stella. (2001). "What's in a Word? A Historical Study of the Concept Dvoeverie. " Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 35(1):19-28.

Stella Rock