Conceptualizing New Jerusalem

Abstract

Abstract This essay re-conceptualizes Muscovite notions of New Jerusalem, by considering the practice of historical replication, including hierotopy, as a religious-political ideology. It explains why and how Tsar Fedor Alekseevich adopted and advanced the replication of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the Resurrection “New Jerusalem” Monastery, founded by Patriarch Nikon and his father Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, despite the ecumenical patriarchs’ condemnation of Nikon and his monastery in 1666 and eschatological fears promoted by Old Believers. Fedor resurrected the New Jerusalem idea in order to solidify his inheritance of the Muscovite throne and the Constantinian legacy in connection with the First Russo-Turkish War of 1676–1681. The tsar embraced the “Byzantine-New Jerusalem scenario,” according to which Muscovite rulers who scored military victories through the power of the True Cross in St. Constantine’s image were obliged to preform churchwardenship (ktitorstvo) in imitation of the Byzantine emperor, including the embellishment of the prototypical Jerusalem church and its replications in Russia. The investigation of Tsar Fedor Alekseevich’s Byzantine-New Jerusalem scenario reveals the non-linear, non-logical type of thinking that advanced political goals, including the establishment of the legitimacy of the tsar and his dynasty. This article highlights and qualifies the strategy of historical repetition, in which the icon reproduces the prototype in real, not metaphoric, terms.