The Presidential Library introduces a book about the life of Peter and Fevronia "equal to Rublev’s serene angels"

July 8, 2018 Russia for the 11th time will mark the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity. On this day the Russian Orthodox Church honors the saints Peter and Fevronia, who from ancient times were considered patrons of the family and marriage in Russia.

"They lived happily ever after and died in one day", - it is said about this holy married couple. The pious Prince Peter joined the Murom throne in 1203 and rightly reigned for a quarter of a century. Being elder, the prince and his beloved wife Fevronia took the monastic vows. They prayed to God that they would die on the same day, and bury themselves bequeathed together. The spouses have died each in his cell in one day and hour - July 8, 1228. Their bodies were placed in different monasteries, but the next day they were together. Peter and Fevronia were ranked by the Russian Orthodox Church as saints. Now the relics of Saints Peter and Fevronia are buried in the Holy Trinity Nunnery in Murom. The tradition of the secular celebration of the day of Peter and Fevronia was continued by the Murom in 1990s: The Day of the City decided to unite the Day of family values​. The Day of Family, Love and Fidelity became the All-Russian holiday in 2008. 

The Presidential Library collections have been enriched with the publication "The Ideal of Love and Fidelity - Saints Peter and Fevronia. From the history of the Russian Orthodox Church" (2017). The book was presented to the specialists of the Presidential Library by representatives of the publishing house “Fevronia” and the Holy Trinity Convent in the city of Murom. The book is preceded by the words of Academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev: "The creativity of Andrei Rublev and the artists of his circle in the Russian literature of the XVI century can be found by only one parallel - "The Story of Peter and Fevronia of Murom"... And the heroine of the Tale, the wise maiden Fevronia, equal to Rublev’s serene angels". The book makes you think about many things in this century of great speed, for "the motif of conjugal purity, preserved thanks to the wisdom of the princess, is one of the main things in the “Tale of Peter and Fevronia".  

Its main testament is in the first letter of the Apostle Paul quoted in the book to the Corinthians: "Love is patient, kind, love does not envy, love does not boast, does not take pride, does not behave excessively, does not seek its own, does not irritate, does not think evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; everything covers, believes everything, hopes everything, tolerates everything. Love never ends".

The Presidential Library portal features electronic copies of both ancient books revealing the history of marriage and wedding ceremonies, and their modern interpretations contained in research. The latter also reflects the change in the concept of "family" in different periods of Russian history.

Smirnov's work "The People's Ways of Entering into Marriage" (1878) says: "Already in ancient times the Slavs formed the notion that a conjugal union does not depend on human arbitrariness, but in advance determined by fate or divine will: "to whom to marry, and to be born the same", marriage is "the justice of Heaven". Smirnov’s book illustrates comparison about the rituals of other countries, for example "in China, the bride and groom eat from one plate. The Romans’ ancient form of marriage was confarreatio - a joint meal. In England, so far, every wedding accompanies the "wedding cake", which must be cut by the bride". 

With the formation of society and the state began to appear laws and regulations governing various aspects of the institution of the family: the book "Marriage and Family" (1900) illustrates what personal relations of the spouses should be in accordance with the civil law in which "conjugal cohabitation was defined in the popular consciousness as institution of ethics". At the same time, "the husband is obliged to love his wife as his own body, excuse her shortcomings and ease her weaknesses ... The wife is obliged to obey her husband as head of the family, to remain with him in love, reverence and unlimited obedience".

Readers can find on the portal a lot of interesting materials on the traditional family values ​​of the royal family of Romanovs – these are documents, rare newsreels, photographs. The essay "Emperor Nicholas" (1894) outlines the attitude of Emperor Nicholas I to this issue: "Shortly before his marriage during the Grand Duke's stay in one of the Swiss cities, he was informed that he had the opportunity to visit the French Empress who was passing through this city from Paris to Vienna, Maria Louise. To this, Ncholas Pavlovich remarked: "The empress's place is now with her husband, not here". He remained faithful to his sublime view all his life, in which, as if to his will, a purely Russian trait manifested itself. As a family man, Nicholas Pavlovich was a thoroughbred man".

In early XX century, the rules were changed - for men wishing to unite themselves by marriage, age restrictions appeared: men were now ordered to marry, being at least 18 years old and not older than 80 years, and women - not less than 16 years and not more than 80 years. Another prerequisite for the creation of a new family was the blessing of the parents. The role of the latter in the strength of marriage can be read in the deep study of the philosopher V. Rozanov's “Family Question in Russia” (1903): "Nothing will help to establish a household and legal family on healthy and true principles, as subordination of questions about traveling and even full divorce is not the authority of Caesar or the Sanhedrin, but the authority of the elder members of the family. They will regret, they will observe. The strength of the family principle is not so important to anyone as for them".

The views on the family, on the relationship between man and woman radically changed after the revolution. Author of the book "The Morals and Life of the Proletariat in the Transition Period", E. Yaroslavsky (1926) emphasizes that the new system creates a family of a new type, where two comrades jointly participate in the socialist accumulation of moral values ​​and are the cell of a society on which, primarily in the demographic way the state is keeping. The new institute of the family also provided for the public education of children.

The Presidential Library collections feature modern research, the topic of which is precisely family values. This, for example, the study of Y. Goncharov "Urban family of Siberia in the second half of the XIX - early XX century". The thesis by E. Enchinov "Family values ​​of the Altai people: the transformation of customary law in modern culture" outlines basic attitudes of the Altai  people in the field of family traditions.

Historians, sociologists and demographers who study the current state of society, note the emerging tendency towards the return of Russians to the basic family values, the bearers of which were and are St. Peter and Fevronia, which initiated the holiday - the Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, introduced in new Russia.