Abstracts of Presentations at the Workshop on the History of the Russian Orthodox Church

March 22-23, 2002

1. Gregory Freeze (Brandeis University), ``Get Real, Go Local: Microhistory and Religious Life in Imperial Russia''

Given the new accessibility of archives outside the capitals,
historians should refocus their research and rely more upon provincial than central archives. The use of local repositories will not merely enhance but change our
perception of Russian religious history. The central repositories, while valuable and indispensable, provide an incomplete, distorted picture. Their files are necessarily too aggregated (as statistics), too abstract (as reports), and too incomplete (as case records) to
provide a clear picture of grassroots reality. It is not merely desirable but essential to refocus research on local history and, even in projects with an empire-wide focus, to include a strong case-study component.


2. Andrei Pliguzov (Dumbarton Oaks), ``Modern Trends in Russian Church Historiography''

Study of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church suffered during the Soviet era. Soviet historians exhibited a strong anti-Church attitude and tended to interpret Church history in the context of a Marxist social and political worldview. Since the fall of the
Soviet Union, study of the history of the Church has not improved because historians have not been trained to understand Church sources.


3. Christine Worobec (Northern Illinois University), ``The Church as an Outlet for Women's Spirituality''

Getting at the heart of women's spirituality at all levels of Russian society in the 19th century is extremely difficult, given the paucity of sources that privilege women. What the average woman thought about God, the Mother of God, Christ, the saints, salvation, and the role that the church played in her life is not easy to ascertain. The historian has to tease information out of a limited number of autobiographies and biographies, sensational stories in the press, and numerous formulaic miracle tales. What the historian finds is that the sources demonstrate ways in which Russian Orthodoxy was relevant to women's lives as well as the ways in which Orthodoxy empowered women. The tenacity with which women clung to Orthodox practices in the early Soviet period when religion came under attack can only be understood by further exploring avenues of women's spirituality in the 19th century.


4. George Pakomov (Bryn Mawr College), ``Perceptions of the Trinity in Art and Literature''

Orthodoxy's implicit task is to keep human beings from
becoming isolated. The Orthodox Christian view of "personhood'' is not isolated and autonomous but
Trinitarian, communal, mysterious, and greater than the self. Life in the community, rather than personal fulfillmentis emphasized. Such views can be found expressed not just in Russian theological tracts but also throughout Russian literary and artistic works.


5. Russell Martin (Westminster College), ``Death and Commemoration in
Russian Orthodoxy''

The study of commemoration for the dead is a new field with a long history. Although we find commemoration at the center
of Orthodox religious practice, it is as yet poorly understood. An almost insurmountable cultural barrier has prevented Western scholars, and an ideological barrier prevented Soviet scholars, from working on the topic. The sources require access to often scattered archival repositories. These sources are often liturgical and resistant to interpretation. The historian requires experience with these sources and their conventions, as well as some grasp of Orthodox eschatology to "read'' them. Many new studies have appeared on a broad spectrum of topics in the field, but still no effort has been made to synthesize them.


6. Debra Coulter (Dorset, UK), "Education and Ordination of the Russian Orthodox
Parish Clergy in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century''

Educational standards remained low throughout the 17th century because the hierarchy failed to insist on and invest in adequate higher education for the
parish clergy. As Muscovy gradually opened its doors to the Western world during the last third of the 17th century, hierarchs began to recognize the need for higher standards of clerical education. Selection procedures for ordinands were tightened and d'iachki were tested to ensure almost universal literacy amongst the parish clergy. This process, although slow and uneven, eventually paved the way for the reformation of clerical education that followed in the 18th century. In 1721, bishops were legally required to found schools for clergy sons, and during the following decades seminaries appeared in every eparchy, with Latin, the key to the riches of Western European learning, firmly rooted in the seminary curriculum.


7. Nickolas Lupinin (Franklin Pierce College), "The Tradition of Elders (startsy) in the Russian Church''

The present historical picture of elders in the Russian Church needs emendation. We can supplement the general pattern by examining sources and studying individuals who have tended to be overlooked. The inner life of the elders reflect such points as humility, mysticism, spiritual direction, obedience, asceticism and ascetic labor, hesychasm, prayer, silence, and immersion in a tradition. We can also produce a concomitant list of other aspects of their lives, such as healing the sick, bearing suffering, dramatic personal encounters, the tribulation of judging others, reigning in the passions, and comforting endless visitors.


8. David Goldfrank (Georgetown University), "The Church Fathers and Monasticism (Late 15th to Early 16th Centuries)''

The inherent tension between individuality and community in
monasticism and in traditional Christianity was reflected in the
dual life of the patristic tradition, since at least some
individual fathers retained their individuality, while they were
also submerged, like the others, in the mass of ``divine
writings.'' How did what might be called a tradition of Church
Fathers develop and evolve in the Russian Orthodox Church? In studying the writings of Iosif Volotskii and Nil Sorskii, one already finds a living Middle Muscovite monastic patristic tradition in which there was room for a great deal of diversity and innovation.


9. Jennifer Spock (Eastern Kentucky University), "The Culture of Northern Monasticism''

The new direction we need for northern monasticism is more studies of monasteries
as primarily religious and pious entities. With this comes a
discussion of their regional context and the role of the leader/teacher. These issues will inevitably uncover the differences (which certainly exist) between the similar types of communities (such as cenobia, on the one hand, and sketes, on the other) in social makeup, economic function, and even pious forms. The other new direction is to get away from solely focusing on a single type of text and to start
integrating the variety of sources.


10. George Majeska (University of Maryland), "Anthony, Archbishop of Novgorod: The Image of the Saint in Russian Church History''

Dobrinia Iadreikovich, better known as Archbishop Anthony of Novgorod (1211-1219 and 1225-1228), is best known to the scholarly community as a result of his description of Constantinople in the year 1200 found in his "Pilgrim Book.'' Producing such a work presupposes a talented and sophisticated author whose biography bears study. It would seem clear that he was from an important family of Novgorod, doubtless merchant-boyar stock. His trip to Constantinople would have required a considerable amount of money, probably his own, since no evidence exists that he was part of an official delegation. His choice to be archbishop reflected the rise of an anti-Suzdal' faction in Novgorod. His later informal canonization in the 15th century can be associated with Novgorodian attempts to remain independent from a new Suzdalian menace, Moscow.


11. Ihor Sevcenko (Harvard University), "East Is East and West Is West''

[No summary available.]


12. Nikolaos Chrissides (University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh), "Comparative Perspectives on Church Spiritual and Material Culture''

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Russian Church remained basically a monastic church in terms of its spirituality. But a new monastic spirit, one that was educated, developed. The Russians built a national Church in the middle of the 16th century, but neither that process nor patriarchate changed the underlying
spiritual and institutional dependence of the Russian Church on the Greek Church. The Russian Church did not create its own spiritual and (partially) material culture. When it tried to do so, it looked for prototypes elsewhere (Ukraine, Greece, the West). Similarly, Greek Orthodoxy responded materially and spiritually to impulses from the West in the 16th and 17th centuries. Therefore, the influence of Greek Orthodoxy on 17th-century Russian Orthodoxy is fundamentally Western in nature.


13. Donald Ostrowski (Harvard University), ``The Russian Church in the 15th and 16th Centuries: Issues of Doctrine and Reform''

Although historians have been inventive in attributing doctrines to the Russian
Church during the 15th and 16th centuries that would count as significant innovations, almost all these practices and formulations were well within the already well-accepted doctrines of the Eastern Church. Upon examining such issues as the Judaizer Heresy, Church factions, mid-16th-century polemics, relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, iconography and
church decoration, relationship of the Novgorod archiepiscopal see with the Moscow metropolitanate,
and establishment of the patriarchate, instead of ad hoc doctrines and practices
manufactured to deal with issues that were unique to Muscovy, one finds an adoption of pre-existing doctrines and practices.


14. Vera Shevzov (Smith College), ``Orthodoxy and the Icon: The Public Presentation of a Dogma in Modern Russia''

Having inherited Orthodoxy from its Byzantine neighbors, Russia inherited its iconic heritage as well. Icons in Russia, no less than in
Byzantium, stood at the
center of sacred history and faith as Russian Orthodox believers perceived them.
For the specifically public presentation of the icon and insights into its theological meaning, one needs to look at liturgical services and sermons.


15. Alexander Golubov (St. Tikhon's Seminary), "Doctrine and Reform in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Notes on Ecclesiology''

To a significant degree, the spiritual tonality of the Russian Church in the 18th and 19th centuries is set by events in the 17th century that in their symbolic religious meaning became truly cataclysmic. Marked by a new secular style of civil government and politics, as well as state-imposed reform of ecclesiastical governance on an overtly Protestant model, the 18th century was mostly a difficult, contradictory and even tragic period for the Church, as it entered a protracted period of "Babylonian captivity'' not only to the state but also to Western forms of theological argument and understanding. Although the 19th century that followed seemed to blur the inherent contradictions, the very violence of the social and religious eruption of the 20th century suggests that the religious contradictions of the 17th century had never been successfully resolved.


16. Robert Arida (Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, Boston), "On the History of the Iconostasis''
16. Robert Arida (Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, Boston),
"The Emergence of the Opaque Iconostasis in the Russian Orthodox
Church"

The name and work of the Byzantine hesychast Theophanes the Greek have been associated with the Paleologan renaissance and its penetration into Russia. His work provides a point of departure from which to trace the appearance and development of the opaque
iconostasis and its vertical expansion. The beginning phase of this development is seen in the iconostasis in the church of the
Annunciation in the Moscow Kremlin. The heretofore inordinate
height of the deisis row of Theophanes accents the path of prayer--the prayer of the heart that leads to union with the divine. In addition, these almost life-size panels attest to the victory of Palamas over Barlaam and the fundamental teaching that all human beings are called
to participate directly in the divine uncreated light. Can Palamism
after Palamas be seen as a contributing force in providing a rationale for the opaque and vertical development of the iconostasis which in turn not only altered the interior space of Orthodox churches, but
significantly changed both the practice and understanding of
liturgical/sacramental worship?


17. Cathy Potter (Chinese University of Hong Kong), "Prosveshcheniia and Its
Goals''

In the program of Church reform in the middle of the 17th century, the notion of prosveshchenie linked spiritual and institutional/ administrative reform. Spiritual reform involved the active propagation of a new understanding of the faith at all levels of society. It demanded informed and thoughtful belief, the internalization of Christian values and ethics, and their application in daily life. It also demanded the redefinition of the role of the Church, from keeper of the cult to teacher of the faith and interpreter of the divine Word--i.e., the "enlightener'' of society. Fulfilling this new and expanded role in a rapidly changing society required administrative reform aimed at creating a strong, untied, and autonomous
Church.


18. Robert O. Crummey (University of California, Davis), "Old Believer Communities: Ideals and Structures"

The Old Believers, both priestly and priestless, are best understood as Eastern Orthodox Christians. As "unofficial'' religious institutions, Old Believer communities governed their own affairs independent of any hierarchical structure or national organization. Old Believer communities combined elements of the cenobitic monastery or convent, the lay parish and the peasant village. The mix of these elements were different from community to community and changed over the course of time. But each of the fundamental forms of Old Believer organization has
contributed to the survival of the movement.