In ancient Ukraine, bursas were an indispensable addition to urban schools. Bursa (lat. Bursa - bag, purse) were dormitories for poor and non-resident unsecured students of medieval educational institutions. They first appeared in France, then moved to other countries. They were supported by donations from patrons, philistines, peasants, monastic income, and the like. In Ukraine, dormitories-bursa were organized by city brotherhoods at schools, as well as by metropolitans, for example, Peter Mohyla at Kiev, and then at other collegia.
Kiev-Mohyla Bursa
In the points of the Kiev consistory of 1768 p., About the bursa of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, it was noted: “Instead of a strange home, an orphanage was established, in general, according to the local custom, called“bursa”from the German word bursch: a meeting for accepting into it not only natural Russian children and youth, who have lost their fathers and mothers and all charity and supplies, but also from other countries coming to the Orthodox Greek faith, such as: Greeks, Volokhs, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Serbs and pious Poles. This orphanage orphanage from the time when His Eminence Metropolitan Peter Mogila was established, and to this day, is preserved by the successors of the ego."
The authors asked to be sure to keep the bursa, which would exist on the funds of various donations.
In general, it should be said that almost all rectors and metropolitans took care of housing "for the poorest students" as an organic part of the academy. For example, Varlaam Yasinsky, during his rector's office in 1665-1673, was more worried about the comfort of the students of the college than about the teachers who lived in the Bratsk monastery.
Bursa of the academy and other educational institutions of Ukraine almost never accommodated all willing "mendicant" students, secondly, its material support demanded, to put it mildly, better, thirdly, it also experienced terrible devastation, say, during the 17th century. her wooden house burned several times. Two hundred men were given a place in the bursa free of charge; the room was cramped, damp, without heating or lighting.
1719. With funds bequeathed to the academy by Joasaph Krokovsky, and partly from his metropolitanate, Metropolitan Raphael Zaborovsky allowed to build a new wooden house for the bursa near the Epiphany Church. Until the middle of the 18th century. this building is so dilapidated that it was impossible to live in it even for unpretentious and needy young men. In the then "petitions" of the Bursaks to the authorities, it was said that the windows and doors had rotted, the house had sunk deep into the ground, in spring and winter it was flooded with water, the students were sick and dying from the cold, moisture and cramped conditions.
One of the teachers, the rector of the church, reported that from Christmas to Easter 1750 he had to confess and receive communion three or four times every night for the inhabitants of the bursa who were dying. In the winter of 1755, more than 30 students died. Small funds were allocated for the treatment of the sick, the repair of stoves and food for the Bursaks, and even then they were squandered by the wicked. Sick students were placed in a house specially designated for the hospital. Their care was primitive, and the guards were constantly forced to turn to the administration for help. So, on December 22, 1769, the senior of the bursa, Andrei Mikhailovsky, with his comrades reported on 44 sick students and asked for help, for which the rector Tarasiy Verbitsky released 20 rubles. The next year, the same Mikhailovsky reported 29 sick students, and the rector allocated 12 rubles for them.
Bursa was divided into “big”, which was located in the premises on the territory of the academy and therefore was also called “academic”, and into “small”, which was located in the premises of several parish churches of Podil. On the "Mountain", that is, where the Kiev city elite lived, the Bursaks were allowed only "Mirkuvati" during the big holidays. The students who lived in the academic course were sometimes also called “academicians”, and outside of it - “small students”. The academic course was under the direct supervision of the prefect. His assistants were appointed a superintendent of teachers and seniors of high school students, who observed the behavior of the students, their homework, maintaining order in the room, solving minor misunderstandings and the like. Seniors were also intended for small bursses. The large stone building of the bursa and the hospital with it were built already in 1778.
In connection with the desire of young people for knowledge, overcoming material difficulties, small bursas at parish schools also grew quantitatively at the end of the 17th - 18th centuries. were a noticeable real phenomenon. At the same time, the administration of the academy and the spiritual authorities could not help but see the existence of a beggar for schoolchildren, therefore they allowed them to "mirkuvati", or simply - to beg. Almost every day, at lunchtime, junior schoolchildren walked under the courtyards of wealthy Kievites and singing spiritual songs and cants, which began with the words: "May the peace of Christ settle in your hearts with our prayers," begging for a piece of bread. Some researchers believe that it is from this that the word "mirkachi" originated; others derive it from the ancient word "mirkuvati", which meant begging for handouts, to trade, and others - from the initial words of the school greeting "Peace to this house", "Peace to you", "Peace to the owner and mistress." Senior students went out to "trade" in the evenings. They also sang psalms, earning them a living, and if this method did not manage to get bread, then the students also allowed "reprehensible means of acquiring food for themselves," that is, to steal
On the "mirkuvannya" of Ukrainian schoolchildren and a wide network of education in the middle of the 17th century. Pavel Aleppsky, an Antiochian traveler, drew attention, who in 1654 wrote: “In this country, that is, the Cossacks, there are countless widows and orphans, because since the appearance of Hetman Khmelnitsky, terrible wars have not subsided. For a whole year, in the evenings, starting at sunset, these orphans went from house to house to beg, singing in a pleasant chorus, such that captures the soul, singing hymns to the Most Holy Virgin; their loud singing can be heard at a great distance. At the end of the chanting, they receive from the hut, near which they sang alms with money, food, or the like, which was suitable for maintaining their existence until they finish schooling. The number of literate people has especially increased since the appearance of Khmelnitsky (God forbid him to live long!), Who liberated these lands, saved these millions of innumerable Orthodox Christians from the enemies of the faith, the damned Poles."
For mockery and slavery, violence against women and daughters of Orthodox Christians, for ambitiousness, treachery and cruelty against Christian brothers, the Poles were punished by Khmelnitsky
If on weekdays, perhaps, not all students from large and small burs took part in the "mirkuvanni", then on holidays, and especially during the main Christian holidays of Christmas, established in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ, which coincided with the ancient Slavic Christmas carols, and Easter, or Easter - on the day of the "miraculous resurrection" of Jesus Christ from the dead, there was almost no such student or schoolboy in general who would give up the pleasure of going home with a "star", with a nativity scene, a district committee, presenting dialogues and "school" dramas, sing psalms and cants, recite Christmas and Easter comic poems in the living room, pronounce funny orations. By this, they aroused a general festive mood among the inhabitants, and they themselves celebrated, receiving as a reward pies and pies, cakes and donuts, dumplings and dumplings, Greek people and buns, fried or live chicken, or duck, a few coins, or even a mug of beer or a glass of vodka. By the way, for the special penchant for beer of Ukrainian students, like all Western vagants, they and themselves they often called "pivoriz".
About dramatic performances and in general about the life of Kiev students in ancient times and at the beginning of the 19th century. M. V. Gogol wrote that they resorted to acting out dramas, comedies, where some theological student "a little lower from the Kiev bell tower" presented Herodias in the play, or the wife of the Egyptian courtier Pentefriy from the tragicomedy "Joseph, the Patriarch …" Lawrence Gorki. As a reward, they received a piece of linen, or a bag of millet, or half a boiled goose and other stuff. All these learned people, - the writer continued with humor, - both the seminary and the bursa, between which there was some kind of hereditary enmity, were extremely poor for food, and, moreover, incredibly gluttonous; so it would be absolutely impossible to count how many dumplings each of them ate at supper; and therefore voluntary donations from wealthy owners could not be enough. Then the Senate, which consisted of philosophers and theologians, accompanied the grammarians and rhetoricians, under the leadership of one philosopher, and sometimes he himself, with sacks on his shoulders, empty other people's gardens. And pumpkin porridge appeared in the bursa"
In addition to the "mirkuvannya", the bursaks received insignificant payment for singing and reading akathists in the church, taught basic literacy in church parishes and thus competed with parish clerks and priests. Time the abbots of churches, with the help of clerks, fiercely dealt with the Bursaks, beat them, kicked them out of parish schools and orphanages, destroyed school supplies, handed them over to the city authorities, bishops and even the Moscow Patriarch and the Tsar. Former rector and then Metropolitan of Kiev Varlaam Yasinsky, professor and prefect Mikhail Kozachinsky, other academy professors tried in every possible way to protect their pupils from the savagery of parish priests and clerks. For example, Mikhail Kozachinsky got a punishment from the consistory for reprisals against students: one parish priest sowed flour for a whole week, was tied with a chain in the cathedral bakery, and the clerk and clerk were whipped in front of the school with whips.
Yes, and the students of the "academic" and small bursa sometimes allowed themselves rude jokes, atrocities and antics, made devastating raids on Kiev bazaars, shops and cellars with food, stole firewood from bourgeois courtyards, sometimes even large logs from the city fence to burn in bursa … "Big" and "small" students-students often resolved conflicts with the townspeople, mayors, archers with the help of fists and clubs. They also defended their dignity before the administration, boycotting the lectures of cruel and unjust professors, seeking their expulsion from the academy.
Bursa in literature
A vivid picture of the ancient bursa with its bizarre customs, travesty imitation of ancient Rome amusingly presented by V. Korogolny in the novel "Bursak". The writer himself studied at the Chernigov or Pereyaslavl seminary, lived in a school and knew her life and the antics of her comrades well.
We see a particularly talented and colorful ironic and humorous reproduction of the bursak life of young Kiev hooligans and daredevils in the works of M. Gogol. Continuing the traditions, the writer himself, in part, had the opportunity to observe those cheerful "grammarians", "rhetoricians", "philosophers" and "theologians" in their natural form.
If the novel is "Bursak". The cornerstone is built on external comic, then in the story "Viy" by N. Gogol there is a deeper romantic reproduction of reality in general, human characters and their psychological experiences are more vividly drawn. Especially memorable is the image of the philosopher Homa Brut and the scenes of the bursak life. They are so bright and attractive, their colors are so fresh that they have not lost their charm and still, perhaps, more than learned treatises. Here, for example, how colorfully "group portraits" are presented of those students who hurried from the bursa through the Podolsk market to their school, in the story "Viy"
“The grammars were still very small; walking, they pushed each other and swore among themselves in the finest treble; Almost all of them had clothes, if not torn, then dirty, and their pockets were filled with all sorts of rubbish, such as: grandmas, whistles made of feathers, half-eaten pie, and sometimes little sparrows."
“The rhetors walked more solidly: their clothes were frequent and completely intact, but on the other hand, there was almost always some adornment on a sample of a rhetorical path on their faces: either the eye went right up to the forehead, or instead of a lip there was a whole bubble, or some other sign; these spoke and swore among themselves in tenor."
“Philosophers took a whole octave lower; in their pockets they had nothing but strong tobacco roots. They did not make any supplies and ate everything that fell immediately; they smelled of tobacco and vodka, sometimes so far away that some artisan, passing by, stopped and sniffed the air for a long time, like a hound."
On the market, the Kiev outbid was afraid to invite philosophers and theologians to buy something, because they always liked only to try, besides with a whole handful.
All students of the academy wore the same clothes - some kind of "long semblance of frock coats, the length of which sows time" (M. Gogol's italics), that is, up to the toes, for a sample of the deacon's clothes. In the middle of the 18th century, say, for 200 students who lived in a college, they were given a chuyka for three years for 12 rubles. and a jacket for 9 rubles, and for a year a hat (one ruble), a summer hat (60 kopecks), a bathrobe (2 rubles 50 kopecks), three shirts (one ruble each), three pairs of linen (48 kopecks each).), two pairs of boots (one ruble each), 50 stitches (80 kopecks each), a bed for 50 people (6 rubles each). For food for 200 bursaks, they gave out 3000 poods of rye flour / 238 / (45 kopecks per pood), millet and buckwheat, 50 quarters each (7 rubles), salt 100 poods (40 kopecks), bacon 50 poods (3 rubles per pood), 80 rubles for a brew, for nonresidents and foreigners for various purchases for 1 rubles. 50 kopecks It is difficult to judge whether it is a lot or a little, but the students-bursak lived from hand to mouth, and yet they studied.
The clothes of the students of the academy consisted of long raincoats on a kind of overcoat without a hood or a hood with folding long sleeves to the heels. For the rich, it could be silk in summer, and for the poor exclusively from cheap, well-fed Chinese, in winter from coarse cloth, trimmed along the edges with red or yellow lace. In winter, a sheepskin coat belted with a colored sash was worn under the kireya. In the summer, they wore a chumarka or a skin made of some kind of colored fabric, which was fastened with metal buttons under the neck. The dandy pants were red or blue; caps with colored tops; boots were worn yellow or red with high heels with horseshoes. Such clothing was considered "noble" and did not change for a long time, and the material for it depended on the well-being of the students' parents; among the poor and orphans, he was the way this or that school sewed. The shorn students were short, under the "pot". It is precisely these, with capes-pearls on the shoulders, that they are depicted on all the above-mentioned engravings of the theses of the disputes.
1784 Samuel Mislavsky ordered from a percentage of the money that Gabriel Kremenetsky and other persons bequeathed to the students of the "orphanage" for ten months of study a year to theologians at a ruble a month, philosophers at 80 kopecks, rhetoricians at 60 kopecks, class students poetics for 40 kopecks. This amount was given only to disadvantaged youths who did not have any means of subsistence. Primary school students in the Bursa were not given money, but supplied bread, cooked borscht and porridge, for Shrovetide with lard, for fasting with butter, buying salt and other products from interest money. For this, strict accounting and reporting to the prefect and rector was adopted.
Professors and teachers were instructed to be vigilant that the junior school students who study languages did not stagger under the gates and windows and did not beg, for which the gates of the bursa were ordered to be locked. At the same time, it was ordered to keep the infirmary at the bursa in order, to provide the sick with provisions, to hire two "port washers" so that they could wash shirts and linen for orphans and sick people, which was not the case before.
Subsequently, especially in the 19th century, the name "bursa" was transferred to all theological schools of the Russian Empire. It was reflected in the novel by A. Svidnitsky "The Lyuboratsky" (1862) and "Sketches of the Bursa" (1863) by N. Pomyalovsky. Basically, the Bursa were closed educational institutions, and their students were forbidden to live in apartments. “Everyone, up to five hundred people, were kept in huge brick houses built during the time of Peter the Great,” M. Pomyalovskiy recalled about his bursa. - This feature should not be overlooked, since in other bursas private apartments give birth to types and everyday life of the bursak life, which are not in a closed school."