The glasshouse burial chapels in 19th century Russia

Religious burial structures as places of family memory and religious commemorative practices in interfaith families are of great research interest in the modern science, and it makes the topic of the research actual. The aim of the research is to review the phenomenon of building the glasshouse burial chapels and to find regularities connected to it. The research is based upon the study of sources such as descriptions and images of architectural objects, memoirs and journal articles. The research methods of ethnology and anthropology are implied to the material. There are two glasshouse burial chapels known in 19^th century Russia - of Princes of Oldenburg in Holy Trinity-St. Sergius monastery near St. Petersburg and of Counts Keller in Sennitsy manor of Moscow province. Both aristocratic families were of Lutheran origins and became interfaith due to conversion of some their members to Orthodoxy. In both cases the construction of the chapels is connected with the burials of young girls. The buildings seemed to cause no contemporaries' astonishment. The analysis shows that creation of such burial places is unique because of combination of traditional conceptions connecting tree and burial with prestigious burial inside a chapel, enabling to surmount confessional borders and bounds of dynastic status. All the other examples of burials connected with plants closer than the generic presence of plants in cemeteries, are somehow opposed to Christianity.

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