The tsar’s sacred aura: commemorating the liberation of the serfs and the failed assassination attempts on Alexander II in the Lithuanian Diocese, 1861-1881
ENThe purpose of this chapter is to explore a subsequent stage of the sacralisation of the ruler and the faithful’s bond of attachment to him. It aims to trace and analyse in a coherent manner a myriad of translations to and iterations within the sacred realm of other significant (by contrast, unique and entirely secular) events, such as Emperor Alexander II’s liberation of the serfs in 1861 (the first and most significant of his ‘great reforms’) and the five unsuccessful attempts on his life, as well as their ‘ripple effects’ further afield (including back in the secular realm), i. e., a fluid two-realm symbolic / rhetorical (theoretical) and ritualistic / physical (empirical) feedback loop between the ruled and the ruler. The large data-gathering effort culminating in the writing of this chapter was guided by my strong interest in the double-stranded helix of religious and worldly belonging. Thus, on the one hand, the chapter aims to elucidate neglected or altogether missing aspects of an Orthodox believer’s mind frame, including subtle patterns of believer logic and telling, if little-known, details of believer praxis as they played out in the Lithuanian diocese over the twenty-year period in question. On the other hand, the chapter does so through the prism of the rising, constantly unfolding, and ever more complicated ritual and mental connection of subjects from all walks of life to the ruler. Thus, although the explicit subject of the chapter concerns channels of the sacralisation of the ruler, it also generates implicit insights into the nascent principles and pathways of the construction and actuation of a novel macro ethos of pan-imperial (global) belonging among Orthodox subjects of the emperor. Although the central focus is Orthodoxy in the Lithuanian diocese, the patterns and processes the chapter discusses concern all existing religious denominations in all four corners of the empire.The choice of the spatial delimitation of this study is dictated by the fact that the Lithuanian diocese alone, of the entire Baltic region, happened to have not only a large Orthodox population, but, more importantly, its own newspaper (Litovskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti, LEV) for more or less the entire period of interest, relating in great detail religious activities from all corners of its domains (all of the Vilnius, Kaunas, and Hrodna provinces, a total of 121,221 sq. km.). Moreover, the location of the diocese’s capital, Vilnius, on the main road (and railway) from St Petersburg to Warsaw and western Europe, meant that it was the scene of more encounters between the emperor and the people than most major towns of the empire. In fact, Vilnius welcomed Alexander II for a ceremonially significant amount of time almost every year. When we add the high number of visits by other members of the royal family (the empress, the heir, grand dukes, and grand duchesses), all of whom played influential roles in the ever expanding scenario of monarchic sacrality under investigation here, we can clearly speak of a larger-than-average quantity and complexity of ceremonial data, allowing us to map in greater detail and nuance the evolution of the ruler-ruled equation on the interface of the sacred and secular realms. [p. 318-319].
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