He Cunningly Exploited Russia’s Religious Hierarchy
When he was not at home, leading his congregation in wild orgies to bring them closer to God, Rasputin was on the road, touring Orthodox Christianity’s holiest sites. His fame grew as he roamed the Russian Empire and beyond, to Greece and Jerusalem, living off donations. He gradually began building up a reputation as a strannik, or a holy wanderer, who could predict the future and heal the sick.
His first big break came in the early 1900s when he arrived at the city of Kazan on the Volga river. Within a short time of his arrival, word spread throughout the region of the arrival of a special strannik with piercing blue eyes, who could soothe spiritual anxieties. Simultaneously, word also spread that the new arrival was having copious amounts of sex with his female followers.
Notwithstanding the sexual escapades, Rasputin quickly charmed and won over the local religious authorities, especially an influential father superior of a famous institution and pilgrimage site, the Seven Lakes Monastery. After gaining the locals’ confidence, Rasputin used them as stepping stones to bigger and better things. He finagled from them a letter of introduction and recommendation to Bishop Sergei, rector of a seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in the Russian capital of Saint Petersburg.
In 1904, the Kazan authorities paid Rasputin’s travel expenses to St. Petersburg, where he met and impressed Bishop Sergei. The bishop in turn introduced the strannik to other influential figures of Russia’s religious hierarchy. They included an Archimandrite (head of a group of a monastery) Theofan, who was well connected in Russian high society, and who became the confessor of the Tsar and Tsarina. The influential Archimandrite was so impressed by Rasputin that he invited him to live in his home, and became one of his greatest boosters.