Secular Conquests, Sacred Spaces: Transforming Orthodoxy on the Russian Frontier

Muscovite Russia’s conquest of the Muslim Khanate of Kazan’ in 1552 was celebrated as the first Orthodox victory against a Muslim state since the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople a century earlier.  In 1556, the Russian Orthodox Church created a new bishopric for the tsar’s expanding empire, centered in Kazan.  As the Church displaced Islam, it symbolically transformed this territory as Orthodox sacred space.  The construction of the Church of the Intercession on the Moat (St. Basil’s Cathedral) in Moscow was a physical manifestation of this religious victory.  The role of the Russian Orthodox Church on the frontier, however, was more ambivalent than the triumphalist narrative suggested.  While the state was integral in the establishment of the local institutions of the Church, these institutions ultimately developed a unique, local identity based on their economic, juridical, and religious roles in the frontier separate from the intentions of the leadership in Moscow.  As this paper will demonstrate, Islam was not conquered, but instead it was accommodated within an Orthodox religious and political system.  In Moscow, neither Church nor State would ever acknowledge their limited influence over the local population, but rather continued to present a public image of the victorious Church Militant.  This façade of success created a space for religious accommodation that produced a functional system that served the tsar’s imperial interests far more than any religious victory ever could.