Background: Rasputin's Early Life
A monastery in Pokrovskoye similar to the one Rasputin visited.
Rasputin was born on January 22nd, 1869, in a small peasant village in east of the Ural Mountains called Pokrovskoye, in what is today the Russian province of Tyumen Oblast.
The village was known for being a well-visited spot by pilgrims travelling into eastern Russia on Orthodox journeys, and it was common for holy men, called starets, to stay in the village from time to time to rest for their journey. Because of this, Rasputin had a large amount of exposure to religion as a child, something that would shape his formation into adulthood.
Rasputin had two siblings that we know of, a sister, Maria, and a brother, Dmitri. Both of them drowned in the local river under different circumstances; Maria, who was epileptic, had a seizure and fell into the river while nobody was around. Dmitri, while playing with Rasputin, fell into a pond; despite Rasputin's heroic effort jumping in to save his brother, Dmitri died later that day. Rasputin carried the grief of his sibling's death throughout his life, even going to far as to later name two of his children after his siblings.
Around the time Rasputin was 18 years old, he spent three months in service at the Verkhoturye Monastery, around five or six miles away from the village, as punishment for public drunkenness and theft. At the time, Rasputin had a reputation for being a vagabond, a con artist, a womanizer, and a thief. The experience at Verkhoturye changed his life, however; it was there that he claimed to have seen an image of the Virgin Mary, who appeared to him to change his ways. He took the virgin's message to heart, and from then on devoted himself to a simple life of God...in his own way, at least.
At about the same time, Rasputin was also exposed to two other religious experiences that would both form his adult religious life and taint his reputation. Firstly, he began fraternizing with a highly illegal Christian cult known as the khlysty, or flagellants. Despite being explicitly forbidden by Russian law thanks to the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, cults were quite popular east of the Urals, as the extent of Russian Orthodoxy had not penetrated far past the massive mountains that divide Russia. Many remote villages in eastern Russia blended Christianity with tribal practices and remnants of old Pagan religions of Novgorod, the Golden Horde, the Scythians, the Uyghurs, and any number of other past cultures of Russia. The khlysty were somewhat more extreme, however, than many of the other cults of the area. The khlysty believed that through physical exhaustion, one became closest to God...but rumors abounded that the exhaustion in question was not only caused by flagellation, but also by sexual orgies and other bizarre rituals. Rasputin denied ever participating in any of their rituals, but the mark had been made on Rasputin's reputation, and later in life would make him unpopular at court.
The second experience was his decision to become a strannik, or wandering pilgrim, after the birth of his third child. He wandered across Russia and Eastern Europe, even going as far as Mount Athos in Greece. By 1905, he arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was introduced to Theophanes of Poltava, who was the rector of the Theological Faculty of St. Petersburg, as well as Milica of Montenegro and her sister Anastastia. All three of them, in addition to being well-versed in Russian Orthodoxy, were also very intrigued by Persian mysticism and occultism, something that rubbed off onto Rasputin. It was through the three of them that Rasputin became introduced to the tsar and his wife. He visited the royal family a few more times in passing before returning to his wandering as a strannik, but his dealings with the royal family were far from over.
The village was known for being a well-visited spot by pilgrims travelling into eastern Russia on Orthodox journeys, and it was common for holy men, called starets, to stay in the village from time to time to rest for their journey. Because of this, Rasputin had a large amount of exposure to religion as a child, something that would shape his formation into adulthood.
Rasputin had two siblings that we know of, a sister, Maria, and a brother, Dmitri. Both of them drowned in the local river under different circumstances; Maria, who was epileptic, had a seizure and fell into the river while nobody was around. Dmitri, while playing with Rasputin, fell into a pond; despite Rasputin's heroic effort jumping in to save his brother, Dmitri died later that day. Rasputin carried the grief of his sibling's death throughout his life, even going to far as to later name two of his children after his siblings.
Around the time Rasputin was 18 years old, he spent three months in service at the Verkhoturye Monastery, around five or six miles away from the village, as punishment for public drunkenness and theft. At the time, Rasputin had a reputation for being a vagabond, a con artist, a womanizer, and a thief. The experience at Verkhoturye changed his life, however; it was there that he claimed to have seen an image of the Virgin Mary, who appeared to him to change his ways. He took the virgin's message to heart, and from then on devoted himself to a simple life of God...in his own way, at least.
At about the same time, Rasputin was also exposed to two other religious experiences that would both form his adult religious life and taint his reputation. Firstly, he began fraternizing with a highly illegal Christian cult known as the khlysty, or flagellants. Despite being explicitly forbidden by Russian law thanks to the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, cults were quite popular east of the Urals, as the extent of Russian Orthodoxy had not penetrated far past the massive mountains that divide Russia. Many remote villages in eastern Russia blended Christianity with tribal practices and remnants of old Pagan religions of Novgorod, the Golden Horde, the Scythians, the Uyghurs, and any number of other past cultures of Russia. The khlysty were somewhat more extreme, however, than many of the other cults of the area. The khlysty believed that through physical exhaustion, one became closest to God...but rumors abounded that the exhaustion in question was not only caused by flagellation, but also by sexual orgies and other bizarre rituals. Rasputin denied ever participating in any of their rituals, but the mark had been made on Rasputin's reputation, and later in life would make him unpopular at court.
The second experience was his decision to become a strannik, or wandering pilgrim, after the birth of his third child. He wandered across Russia and Eastern Europe, even going as far as Mount Athos in Greece. By 1905, he arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was introduced to Theophanes of Poltava, who was the rector of the Theological Faculty of St. Petersburg, as well as Milica of Montenegro and her sister Anastastia. All three of them, in addition to being well-versed in Russian Orthodoxy, were also very intrigued by Persian mysticism and occultism, something that rubbed off onto Rasputin. It was through the three of them that Rasputin became introduced to the tsar and his wife. He visited the royal family a few more times in passing before returning to his wandering as a strannik, but his dealings with the royal family were far from over.