Wandering Rus for the Sake of Christ

The name of Sergey Vasilievich Maksimov, a writer, ethnographer, and researcher of folk life, is well known to connoisseurs and lovers of domestic history and culture. The book "Wandering Rus for the Sake of Christ" (1877) was written by Maksimov based on his impressions from a trip to the Northwestern region, where he was commissioned in 1868 by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society: the writer traveled through the Smolensk, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Vilnius, Grodno, and Minsk provinces. In this book, Maksimov addresses a phenomenon of folk life known as pilgrimage – with its various sociocultural and everyday features. Pilgrims, lovers of Christ, recluses, vagabonds, wanderers, humble brethren, and others – among them were true professionals in their field, experts in customs, beliefs, and signs, performers of spiritual poems and epics. Pilgrimage appears not only as a way of life but also as a spiritual quest for an Orthodox person, for whom the value and meaning are embedded in the very idea of the journey.