Abstract

In the first quarter of the 18th century, on the initiative of Peter I, a system of military hospital institutions was created and their organization by private individuals was encouraged. This appeal received endorsement from the bureaucratic nobility and was embodied in the testaments of the famous Petrine diplomat, Prince B.I. Kurakin (1727), and the first Russian State Chancellor, Count G.I. Golovkin (1729). In the detailed regulations attached to his last will, B.I. Kurakin not only delineated the structure of the staff of the hospital, which, along with the church, was to be built in Moscow, the composition of meals and clothing given to the patients and staff, but also outlined their way of life. Besides, the will designated the amount of money required for the construction and maintenance of the Moscow almshouse-hospital, and the source of its acquisition, including interest on capital placed in foreign banks. G.I. Golovkin’s testament also mainly describes how to maintain the hospital church and the hospital in Vysotsky monastery in Serpukhov, where his parents’ remains rested and where he bequeathed to bury himself. The unprecedented comparison of the texts of the two wills with regard to charitable activities has highlighted both the common features of Old Russian piety inherent in these representatives of the political elite of Peter’s time, and the differences in the manifestation of the Europeanism they had adopted. The mentalities of both State Chancellor Golovkin, who never left Russia, and Prince Kurakin, much more Europeanized in accordance with the nature of his service, were still determined by their religious worldview. The latter manifested itself in the concern for memorial services and church building. In addition, Kurakin’s will transferred the vow taken upon himself in front of the icon of Nicholas the Wonderworker to his heir, under the threat of curses and punishment on the day of the Last Judgment if the deceased’s will had not been fulfilled. In both testaments, church benevolence and ancient Christian love for the poor, characteristic of Old Russian piety, were combined with the forms and goals of the charity of the modern period. Its embodiment were the prudently equipped hospitals-almshouses, initiated by the example of the supreme power.